From USSR to Russia

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/opinion/6932356/From-the-Soviet-Union-to-Russia-today-the-long-road-to-democracy.html

From the Soviet Union to Russia today - the long road to democracy

This online supplement is produced and published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the content.

Vladislav Inozemtsev, political scientist

4:43PM GMT 04 Jan 2010

December 14 marked the 20th anniversary of the premature death of one of the worthiest men of our time – academician Andrei Sakharov. In two decades the world has changed beyond recognition, but Russia, whose fate was of such heartfelt concern to Andrei Dmitrievich, has not taken the road that he would have liked.

Democratic reforms have not created a stable civil society, and the "liberation of initiative" that led to the collapse of the Soviet-era economic system has not so far given rise to a civilised market economy.

Today, democratic norms are disregarded even more cynically than in the USSR, while the economy that existed here in the late Eighties seems like a model of technical perfection. Why haven’t the hopes of those who believed in "socialism with a human face" been realised? Is it worth hoping that Russia will come to better future?

In my view, the hopes of 1989 were, alas, illusory. It was assumed that we could build a democratic system in a society that had long since forgotten the traditions of private property, and that was mired in a deepening economic crisis. The democracy of that time had too many features of populism not to turn into some form of authoritarianism.

Among the democrats, there were people who stood up for the democratic idea, but did not use that idea in their own interests. Small wonder that they "democratically" got rid of their legally elected parliament in 1993, "democratically" ensured the victory of their candidate in the 1996 presidential elections and, to a large degree, "democratically" selected a suitable successor for him in 1999.

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• A very practical approach 
  04 Jan 2010

Genuine democracies are formed over decades. Accidental democracies rarely prove viable. It is a paradox, but a movement toward democracy either begins with the elite, or is prepared by the actions of the elite. In both cases, they turn out to be stable when society proceeds confidently along the path of economic progress, and there arises a large class of people with a vital interest in sensible and predictable rules of the game, rules created by the responsible choices of a significant number of citizens rather than by the whims of certain leaders.

A class of people to whom the rest of society can turn for support. This means the following: democracy has a firm foundation only in a society which has developed with confidence over a certain period of time and whose elite is not parasitical. In other words, democracy takes shape with the greatest probability in a successfully modernising society.

Modernisation is the most important instrument of democratisation. It is precisely the absence of modernisation that determined the failure of the late-Soviet democratic project. In recent decades, many successful democracies have grown up in places where, for the sake of economic success, semi-authoritarian regimes allowed, or even initiated, modernising transformations.

These modernisations did not immediately bring about democracy, but then a populist democracy has never brought about modernisation. As many Western observers remark, a non-liberal democracy is worse than authoritarian liberalism. Strictly speaking, the latter was the main political form for most of the successful modernisations in Asia and Latin America at the end of the 20th century.

In Russia, proponents of democratic changes must of necessity be adherents of modernisation. In the last 20 years, Russia has continued to lag behind the West, and not less but more. That is why a new wave of populism – if one were to arise because of disappointment in the actions of the powers that be – would lead to a still more unenlightened regime than the one established in 2000. An authoritarian regime willing to modernise is signing its own death warrant, sacrificing – albeit unconsciously – its own interests to the future prosperity of the nation.

Now, too, all those who wish Russia a democratic and successful future must become engineers of modernisation. True, opinion polls show that, at this point, only a small percentage of the population is ready take slogans of modernisation seriously.

But the modernisations of South Korea in the Sixties and of Brazil in the Seventies did not begin with plebiscites; they ended with them – when the citizens realised that they no longer needed those regimes that had been forced to begin modernisation. This will happen in Russia, too, one day. But for now, we mustn’t let the elite wear everyone out with talk of the modernisation agenda, the only agenda that can turn Russia into a stable liberal democracy.

Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow. Twenty years have flown by, and today we can only regret that Andrei Sakharov’s dreams are still dreams. But we must try to make the next 20 years more productive.

Vladislav Inozemtsev is director of the Centre for Studies of Post-industrial Societies and editor-in-chief of Svobodnaya mysl.

Johnson's Russia List

El Imperio Británico

http://www.friesian.com/british.htm

The Sun Never Set on the British Empire,
"Dominion over palm and pine"

The sun never set on the British Empire
because the sun sets in the West
and the British Empire was in the East.Anonymous Student

Far-called, our navies melt away;
    On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
    Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!
Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional," 1897

---

In the animated GIF file above, not all British possessions of 1937 are represented, only select ones for each of the 24 time zones of the Earth. (All British possessions are listed below.) The time zones themselves may be said to be artifacts of the British Empire, since they are based on the Meridian of Greenwich -- at the original Royal Observatory, 1675-1953, in London (as seen in the image), where the building to the right contains the meridian transit instrument that defines the line of zero longitude. Since 1884 this has been the internationally accepted prime meridian for the calculation of longitude. The animation may also be used to inspect the operation of theInternational Dateline, which divides the -12h/+12h time zone. (Animation may be stopped either with the "stop" key or the ESC key.) It is interesting to note that although several places in the Pacific might fall into the -12h time zone, the Dateline itself and the boundaries of the -11h zone are today drawn in such a way that no jurisdiction uses the -12h zone (Tonga, formerly British, uses +12h; Midway Island & the Aleutians use -11h). Some time zone boundaries have been changed since 1937. Gambia no longer seems to be in the -1h time zone. Also, there have been several time zones that are at a half hour rather than a whole hour interval from Greenwich, including today India (+5h30m), Burma (+6h30m), and central Australia (+9h30m). My source for the 1937 zones (in the Atlas of the British Empire, edited by Christopher Bayly, Facts on File, 1989, p.246) does not clearly indicate these variations, so no attempt is made to represent them.
The "British Empire" was not a de jure entity (like the German Empire, Austrian Empire, Russian Empire, or Japanese Empire), since Britain itself was a kingdom (the "United Kingdom" of Great Britain and Ireland, or Northern Ireland in 1937). One British possession, however, was an empire, namely India. Queen Victoria became "Empress of India" in 1876. The formal British adoption of India as an Empire, however, was seen at the time as a response to Bismark's creation of the German Empire (1871).
The "British Empire" usually means, however, not something in relation to the Empire of India, but the whole of British colonial possessions spread around the world. As an "Empire" this does not look much like Rome, China, or Russia, which were geographically continguous, with simple, continuous borders. Instead, the "British Empire" was functionally a bit more like the later Holy Roman Empire, whose fragmentation and particularism -- a "jury rig" in British nautical terms -- gravely compromised the power of the whole. The power of Britain at its height was almost entirely a function of that of Great Britain itself, as the power of the later Holy Rome Emperors was almost entirely a function of that of the Hapsburgs. Most would not consider this a flattering characterization of Britain's achievement, since the Holy Roman Empire was famously, in Voltaire's words, neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Yet when Emperor Leopold I had to make a deal with the Margrave of Brandenburg just to get him to fulfill his feudal duty to support the Emperor in the War of the Spanish Succession (in 1701), this does not sound too different from the difficulties that Britain faced in World War I and World War II to obtain the full participation of the Dominions in those wars. It was not a foregone conclusion, especially for South Africa, that they would participate at all. By 1939, Australia and New Zealand had long been expressing reservations about involvement in (another) European war, and this line of thinking was only cut short when it became clear that a direct threat from Japan was a reflex of the European situation. When Britain was then unable to stop the Japanese, Australia and New Zealand formed ties with the United States that soon rivaled in sentiment (at least) those for Britain.
The growing and troublesome autonomy of the Dominions was a function of their geographical detachment and distance from the Mother Country. The growth of the United States, for instance, during the same period, did not produce the same problems, since even distant new foundations, like California, remained politically and Constitutionally integrated with the whole, adding an unambiguous increment of wealth and power to the nation. But Britain barely considered constitutional intregration of colonies into Great Britain. Its initial instinct, to hold colonies in thrall, led to the American Revolution and the alienation of its first and most promising colonies. Its later approach, with gradual grants of autonomy, kept the Dominions happier and willingly faithful longer, but ultimately had the same practical effect, as, by the end of World War II, they were all functioning as fully independent states. The dynamic of this fragemenation I have examined elsewhere.
While India was the "Jewel in the Crown" of the Empire, its role in British power was also unlike the possessions of more conventional Empires. It was not geographically, historically, culturally, racially, or religiously contiguous with Great Britain. It was the seat of an entirely different and ancient Civilization, with a vastly larger population than all the rest of British domains put together, and the British were always determined to maintain a distance and a separation from it. The British Empire could therefore have never gone the way of the Roman Empire, where eventually all inhabitants came to enjoy a common citizenship and a common participation in the political, military, cultural, and religious life of the whole. In time, Rome even underwent a religious revolution in the triumph of Christianity, which had grown up out of the disparate, non-Latin elements of the Empire. The British liked to think of themselves as modern Romans, but a fate comparable to Rome, where India would have dominated Britain demographically and perhaps even religiously, was not something they were willing to contemplate.
Yet the dynamic of British ideology and practice was headed in that direction and could only be forestalled by arbitrary and incoherent barriers. Thus, 19th century Britain, when it realized that it was not just out to make money but had come to assume the moral responsibility of ruling millions of people in their own interest, always saw itself on a civilizing mission and soon began in earnest to educate and assimilate Indians (and later, Africans, Chinese, etc.) in all the terms of modern life -- science, liberty, free enterprise, democracy, etc. Christianity (ironically, in light of its Roman origin) was also thrown in there, but official suport for conversions was toned down after the Mutiny (1857-1858). It was not many decades, however, before a Western educated and alarmingly Anglicized Indian elite came into being. By all the ordinary dynamics of Empire (or at least Roman Empire), an educated Indian could be expected to circulate freely among Englishmen, possess the same dignity and freedom as other Subjects of Queen Victoria, and reasonably be expected to participate in the Government of his own country, as many British had already said that modernized Indians could be expected to do. So if a barrier was to be maintained, how was that going to work? Unfortunately, the spirit of the age contributed the impediment:  Racism. If the non-white races were inherently inferior, physically, morally, or intellectually, to whites, then an Englishman was not simply interchangeable with a modern, educated Indian (or African, etc.).
The ugly principle of race spelled the doom of the British Empire, for the British ultimately knew better; and there was the incoherent circumstance that Indian Subjects in Britain could actually be elected to Parliament, as was Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) in 1892. If Indians were racially inferior and could not be trusted to rule their own country, how could one of them become a Member of Parliament? And then it was exceedingly awkward after World War II to maintain racial barriers and racist ideology when Britain had needed to rally support to defeat the ultimate exemplar and advocate of racist ideology,Nazi Germany. To the extent that Hitler actually admired the power (and racism) of the British Empire, he helped to destroy it.
Yet the racism was already doomed, as it was in the United States, by its inconsistency, as noted, with English principles of individual liberty, personal dignity, and natural rights. Someone like Mohandas Gandhi could feel this inconsistency in the most personal way, after he had enjoyed the easy equality and personal friendships of his life in London, while he was a law student in the Middle Temple, and then experienced the color barrier and personal insults, sometimes from the same individuals, after he had returned to India. Yet even Gandhi remained a supporter of British liberal principles, in the law and the Empire, for many years. Only slowly did he come to believe that the denial of independence to India rested only on the worse aspects of British ideology, but then he also realized that he could undermine British confidence and resolve precisely by appealing to the "better angels" of the British character. Prejudice and snubs against the "Wogs" and "N****rs" were not only rude, they were just not "fair play," something a gentleman should not tolerate. This proved to be a most effective strategy.
Despite the informal and even confused nature of the larger "British Empire," the term "imperial" worked its way into various official terminology about British possessions, e.g. the "Imperial General Staff" and the "Imperial War Museum." When India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, the Indian Empire ceased to exist and both countries became, for a time, Dominions -- the category for previous British self-governing territories, starting with Canada (1867) and later coming to include the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, and, for a time (1926-1934), little Newfoundland (which did not join Canada until 1949). As the "Empire" faded, the British Commonwealth took over, though that organization seemed to offer less and less as time went on in terms of real economic, military, or political advantages. Indeed, if the Holy Roman Empire was in some ways analogous to the British Empire, then the Commonwealth may be compared to the German Confederation of 1815, where there was no pretense that the sovereignty of its members was in the least compromised by the largely symbolic organization of the whole.
In 1909 the British Empire encompassed 20% of the land area of the Earth and 23% of its population. Although the first industrial power, by 1900 Britain had been surpassed by both United States and by Germany; but Britain was still the financial center of the world and the premier merchant carrier.

country or area	1900		1909-1913 average/year	1914
	Import/Export millions of £	Import/Export millions of £	Import/Export millions of £	Investment millions of £
Canada	22/8	22.2/9.6	27.3/21.2	500
United States	139/20	138.8/37.4	--	750
India & Ceylon	27/30	27.4/31.0	44.8/54.0	400
Australia	24/22	23.8/23.6	56.3/39.8	400
New Zealand	10/6	11.6/5.9
West Indies	2/4	1.8/4.7	2.9/3.4	750
South America	28/24	287.3/216.5	--
Europe	221/118			200
Medi- terranean	27/21
Middle East	19/12			1000
East Asia	20/26		22.7/12.2
Sub-Saharan Africa	8/20	8.4/21.6	5.8/7.9
South Africa			10.7/19.6
Source	Bayly's Atlas, pp.170-171	Lloyd's British Empire, p.423	Dalziel's Atlas, pp.94-95	Lloyd's British Empire, p. 258

British trade in 1900 and between 1909 & 1913, and foreign investment in 1914, is shown in the following table. Somewhat different figures for trade are given in Cristopher Bayly's Atlas of the British Empire and T.O. Lloyd's The British Empire, 1558-1995 so both sets of figures from are given. Where there is disagreement, Lloyd tends to show slightly greater British exports than Bayly; but if we add Bayly's figures up for Lloyd's "world" category, we get 315/201, which is slightly smaller exports and much larger imports (against 287.3/216.5). Nigel Dalziel's The Penguin Historical Atlas of the British Empire only gives trade figures for British possessions, thus obscuring the predominance of foreigntrade in the British economy. We get a hint of Leninism in Dalziel's heading for the chapter, "the country became increasingly dependent on foreign markets to absorb rising industrial output" [p.94] -- as though rising output requiredexport. See below. The long term problem of the British economy would be lack of production, not lack of markets.
Indeed, Britain in this period is running a large trade deficit. This is usually taken as a sign of British decline. However, as David Hume noted as early as 1752, this really just means that enough money is exported to make up the difference. This would cause a deflation, unless enough money is created or brought in (for investment) to make up the difference. Since Britain did not experience any deflation after the 1890's, it is fairly clear that the money flows were correcting the balance. This kind of thing was later thought to be indicative of American decline when the United States began to run large trade deficits and in the 1980's became a net debtor from foreign investment in United States securities. However, the dire predictions at the time gave no hint of the relative strength of the United States economy, with good growth, low unemployment, and negligible inflation in the 1990's, with the American advantage over Europe and Japan increasing in the course of the decade. By 1999, the United States economy was all but carrying, Atlas-like, the stagnant or shrinking economies of the rest of the world -- though it might be said that the financial collapse of 2008 raises new questions about the foundation of the prosperity after 2000.
The British balance of trade and balance of payments situation in 1900 thus need not have been an indicator of any real ill health. British decline ultimately had to be from other causes, like an absolute decline in innovation and investment at home. Indeed, when Americans in the 1980's worried about the Japanese buying up the United States, the largest foreign investors were actually British -- which for the future meant American growth rather than British growth.
Another lesson to be read off the trade figures is that a relatively small fraction of British trade involved colonies that would later constitute the "Third World." Indeed, the only trade surpluses in the table are with India, Africa, the West Indies, and the Far East, which might give some heart to Marxist claims that British colonies, especially India, were the outlet for Capitalist "excess production." However, the trade surpluses are small, and overall British trade with India and the other colonies is hardly larger than with the much, much smaller populations of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. No serious argument can be made that the likes of Australia and New Zealand, with their own autonomous governments and protective tariffs, were being "exploited" by Great Britain. Instead the largest British export market is simply with the rest of Europe. Indeed, Europe, the United States, Australia, Canada, etc. are the places where more people would have enough money to buy British goods.
The figures for investment reveal the truth about the thesis first advanced by J.A. Hobson in 1902 (Imperialism), and later taken up by Lenin, that British conquest followed British investment. Hobson wished to explain the recent Boer War as the effect of £400 million of investment in the South African gold and diamond minds. Lenin saw British colonies as the necessary outlet for British capital, as well as for British capitalist "overproduction." Unfortunately, if this thesis were true, then the British should have been conquering the United States, not South Africa, since the largest single destination of British investment was the Americas, but Canada was the only large scale British possession. But just as Hobson and Lenin were the kind of people who would never know how to invest capital productively, Britain itself was losing its previous genius in that area also. In the new gasoline economies of automobiles and airplanes, let alone the electronic industries of light and radio, Britain was never in the lead and never caught up.
Today Queen Elizabeth II is still the official Head of State of scattered former possessions, such as the Solomon Islands; but the British connection for the remaining Dominions (Canada, Australia, & New Zealand) has been increasingly compromised and questioned -- with even the term "Dominion" itself passing out of usage. Canada has come up with its own flag (losing the Union Jack canton), its own national anthem ("Oh Canada!"), its own constitution, and its own perhaps fatal political division between francophone Quebec and all the other, sometimes bitterly resentful anglophone provinces (resentful in part for the cost of bilingualism -- mandated for federal business everywhere, while Quebec restricts or prohibits public uses of English -- New Brunswick is the only Province that is officially bilingual). Why Canada should then continue with a "Queen's Government," or even as a single country, is increasingly an open question. When I visited British Columbia as a child in 1959, there were Union Jacks as well as Canadian Ensigns on sale everywhere for tourists. On my last visits to Canada, in 1995 (at Niagara Falls) and 2004 (Toronto), there were no Union Jacks to be seen at all -- but in a park in Toronto I did notice a statue of Edward VII that had been relocated from Delhi! Meanwhile, Australia, always resentful of much of what happened in World War I (at Gallipoli) and in World War II (at Singapore and in Burma), contains a powerful movement to become a Republic. Recently, however (November 6, 1999), this was put to stand-up vote and lost; so Australia will remain a Dominion (or whatever) for a while yet. The British Empire, in one sense long gone, confirmed with the return of Hong Kong to Communist China in 1997, thus continues a slow fade everywhere. At the same time, British sovereignty in Britain itself becomes increasingly compromised by participation in the ill designed, ill considered, corrupt, and heavy handed Euro-government of the European Community, and by separatist movements in Scotland, Wales, and, as always, Ireland.
One artifact of British influence is the side of the road on which traffic moves. In Britain, you drive on the left, and cars have the steering wheel on the right. It was probably France and United States that established the larger international pattern of driving on the right, with the steering wheel on the left. In Europe, only Austria-Hungary, Portugal, and Sweden followed the British pattern The successors to Austria-Hungary -- Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Hungary -- switched to the right, ironically, only under the occupation or influence of Nazi Germany. Portugal and Sweden, however, switched on their own. Elsewhere, switches from left to right reflect the decline in British influence. This would appear to be the case with places like China, Argentina, and Ethiopia. In former British colonies, this is also understandable. However, three significant countries still drive on the left, without a heritage of British control:  Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia (I once had a student who, after visiting Japan, positively affirmed that they drove on the right!). Otherwise, major former British possessions, like a large part of Africa, India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, etc. preserve the British preference. The Indian Ocean still looks like a British Mare Nostrum in terms of driving preference.

So what went wrong with the British Empire? I have examined in detail elsewhere what went wrong with Rome, and here I have already compared the British Empire to the Holy Roman Empire, which might imply a parallel analysis. But if the reality of the power of the later Holy Roman Emperors was actually the power of the Hapsburgs, and the power of the British Empire was Britain, what happened to that power? Would Britain inevitably be ground down by the greater resources, human and material, of the superpowers? Perhaps. But Britain hurried its decline with the dynamic of its own attitudes. For the key to British power was the Industrial Revolution. This began in Britain, and in the 19th century it made her the "workshop of the world." But that advantage did not last. The spirit of invention and entrepreneurship was often only honored in the breach. The actual individuals responsible for the Industrial Revolution were typically Non-Conformists, Scots, foreigners, and other marginal types. The stolid English squire, like "Uncle Matthew" Radlett in Nancy Mitford's books, had nothing to do with it. And what many prosperous English merchants really wanted was to make enough money to get out of "trade," buy land, and join the aristocracy -- an aristocracy to whom the "working class" meant, not the Marxian Proletariat, but all those in the grubby business of buying and selling. An English "gentleman" was, by legal definition, someone without a regular trade or profession. Neither capitalists nor proletarians need apply.
This was bad enough, and it had its effect. But the Empire itself exercised its own corrosive effect on British attitudes. The British Empire was said to have been won on the playing fields of Eton. But the education of a British Public (i.e. private) School like Eton was not an education in engineering or management or finance; it was an education in the qualities of command, leadership, and rule. The British were indeed properly educated to be Roman Proconsuls, and this was something often needed in the colonies; but it contributed nothing to the industrial or commercial strength of Britain, and its very prestige sapped, undermined, and degraded the material sources of British power. The Soviet mole in John Le Carre's classic Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy [1974] was of a generation raised to rule, which then had nothing to rule. He really hated the Americans. But that tells the tale. The torch of innovation, invention, finance, etc. had been passed to the United States, and the British more or less forgot that they had simply dropped that torch, as it were, as they prepared to rule the Wogs for their own good. Thus, the true strength of Britain was in the principles fostered by the 19th Century Liberal Party. Yet now only the Tories and Labour remain, the former, despite Mrs. Thatcher, still remembering when the Sun Never Set and an Englishman could enjoy a good gin and tonic, brought by a native servant, on his veranda in Kenya, and the latter certain that those inventors, industrialists, and financiers were simply exploiting the workers. This became a folie à deux from which no good can ever be expected. In England today, it often seems like the most enterprising and hardest working people are immigrants from India.
But there is something else about the Empire. So much opprobrium towards "Imperialism" today arises either from the Leninist view of it, which ought to be (but isn't always) suspect, or from a simple moral principle that the British had no right to rule other peoples against their will. Against the Marxist-Leninist view that the exploitation of colonies was part of the larger capitalist exploitation of labor, there is the sobering truth, evident by the eighties, that many former British colonies, especially the African colonies, had been better off economically under the British than they were later. Colonies that nationalized industries and fixed prices saw the collapse of industries and the decline of their economies. Those that took the most up-to-date adivce, to keep out foreign capital, to adopt top-down Stalinist plans for development, and, in short, to go the Progessive route of socialism, typically ended up with dictators who practiced what was bitterly called "Swiss Bank Account Socialism." Eventually, anti-globalization protesters would be shocked to learn that what Third World countries wanted from the world economy was free trade -- their agricultural products were being kept out by the protectionism of the United States and the European Union.
But even if the British were better stewards of African economies, isn't it still true that they simply did not have the right to rule other people against their will? Well, I am presently, in a democracy, ruled by other people against my will. Indeed, since about 1988 I have not voted for anyone who ended up being elected, while those who were elected daily violate the Constitution, and criminally assault my rights, which they all swear an oath to uphold. There is a word for this:  the tyranny of the majority. So this raises the question:  Is it better to ruled by an irresponsible autocrat who nevertheless institutes justice and righteousness; or to be ruled by a corrupt political class that, with the justification of an occasional election, consists of liars, thieves, and looters? Of course the former is preferable, although the problem, sincePlato, has always been to identify an autocrat who has the wisdom to rule and not be corrupted by wealth and power. There is no solution to that problem.

Malthus, Marx o mercado

Mois´s Naim

Acabo de regresar de China. Pese a que mi última visita no fue hace mucho, he percibido enormes transformaciones. Eso sucede cuando un país gigante crece al 10 por ciento al año. Fui por primera vez en 1978, cuando comenzaban sus reformas económicas. Recuerdo las grandes avenidas casi sin coches y llenas de una multitud en bicicleta, todos vestidos más o menos igual. Hoy están bordeadas de rascacielos con la arquitectura más audaz del mundo, llenas de automóviles y de gente vestida de todos los colores y estilos.
El cambio fundamental es que millones de chinos han salido de la pobreza y formado una clase media que, si bien mucho más pobre que la de Europa o EE. UU., dispone de medios para consumir más comida, medicinas o electricidad.
¿Se transformará este gran éxito en una catástrofe para el planeta? Hay tres maneras de responder. La primera es la de Thomas Malthus, quien en 1798 explicó que, como la población crece a mayor velocidad que la producción de alimentos, inevitablemente las hambrunas, las enfermedades y las guerras "reequilibrarían" la situación. El Club de Roma patrocinó en 1972 la publicación del libro Los límites al crecimiento. Vaticinaba una catástrofe malthusiana hacia el 2000 y pronosticaba que el petróleo se agotaría en 1992. Obviamente, Malthus y sus seguidores subestiman el impacto de las nuevas tecnologías. La revolución verde en la agricultura, por ejemplo, llevó a que en 20 años se duplicara la producción de cereales en los países pobres. El mundo hoy produce más alimentos per cápita que nunca.
La segunda respuesta: el problema no es de producción sino de distribución. Muy pocos consumen demasiado y demasiados consumen muy poco. EE. UU. consume el 25 por ciento de la energía producida en el mundo anualmente, aunque su población es solo el 4,6 por ciento del total mundial. Cada alemán gasta casi nueve veces más energía que cada indio, y 30 veces más que un bangladesí. Desde esta perspectiva, Marx tiene razón: hay que obligar a una distribución más igualitaria del consumo. Y eso lo tiene que hacer el Estado, seguramente por la fuerza.
La tercera manera de verlo es desde el mercado: los precios y los incentivos resolverán el problema. Si hay escasez subirán los precios, disminuirá el consumo y aumentarán los incentivos para ser más eficientes e inventar tecnologías para producir más a menor costo. Si el petróleo sigue subiendo, el viento, el sol y el mar pueden competir con los hidrocarburos. Esto ha venido pasando, y los aumentos en producción y las nuevas tecnologías lo confirman. Pero los ajustes del mercado son brutales y no resuelven el problema de los consumidores, para quienes una disminución en el consumo (obligada por el alza de precios) significa pasar hambre. Tampoco resuelven las fallas de mercado a nivel global: los océanos se deterioran rápidamente por su explotación indiscriminada. Y sabemos lo que pasa con las emisiones de CO2 que calientan el planeta.
Ni Malthus ni Marx ni los mercados dan respuestas adecuadas a las difíciles preguntas que plantea el explosivo crecimiento de China o la expansión de la clase media y el consumo mundial. Las respuestas tecnológicas estimuladas por el mercado pueden llegar tarde para evitar graves daños sociales y medioambientales. La exagerada intervención del Estado para corregir desigualdades asfixia la aparición de soluciones que solo los mercados pueden generar. Y si se desatienden, las fallas de los mercados pueden hacer el planeta invivible.
Las ideologías rígidas no ayudarán a encontrar salidas. Hay que inventar otras nuevas y dar rienda suelta al pragmatismo y la experimentación. En el pasado, la humanidad halló soluciones para problemas sin precedentes. No hay por qué suponer que no las volverá a encontrar.

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