1. THE THREE MAJOR CHANGES CONTEMPORARY
Fernando Alcoforado *
The process of development of capitalism in the second half of the twentieth century
brought the advent of three major changes that are transforming the face of the world,
not only in their production structures, but mainly in the social and international
relations. The three main changes concern the revolutions in science and technology,
management and international relations.
The scientific and technological revolution is already being felt almost everywhere in
the world with the introduction of computer technology, microelectronics, new
materials and biotechnology production processes. The scientific and technological
advances achieved in the last 30 years have been fantastic in all sectors of human
activity, whether in agriculture, industry, commerce and services.
This revolution has produced significant advances, for example in aerospace
technology, which is enabling the transport of large numbers of people and cargo to any
part of the globe at a time dwindling, and telematics (telecommunications associated
with the computers), especially with the use of networks such as the Internet, which
facilitate communications globally and tend to spread further in the future.
Regarding the scientific and technological revolution, which occurs worldwide, there is,
arguably, the technology of the "superhighway" or super highway of information that
allowing the union of computers with telecommunications, is providing the conditions
for sounds, images and data transiting the speed of light in a single line. The prediction
is that Japan interconnects nationwide fiber optic cables for the year 2015, while the
United States will achieve this goal by the year 2030.
To Naisbitt and Aburdene, "telecommunications - and computers - will continue to
bring about change, as it did during the manufacturing industry. We are building the
foundations of advanced international information. In telecommunications, we are going
to form a network single world, just as economically, we are becoming a global one"
(Naisbitt, J. et Aburdene, P., Megatrends 2000, Amana Key Editora, São Paulo, 1990,
pág. 34).
The scientific and technological revolution underway sum up the managerial revolution
that arises in response to the need to raise productivity levels of capital, whose decline
has been increasing in the last three decades, with the use of new methods of business
management such as Total Quality and Reengineering, among others. According to
Peter Drucker, "since Taylor started, productivity increased about fifty times in all
advanced countries. Unprecedented expansion and this was the origin of all elevations
of the standard and quality of life in developed countries (Drucker, P., Sociedade Pós-
Capitalista, Pioneira, São Paulo, 1993, pág. 18).
Drucker says that it is still on page 22 of his book Sociedade Pós-Capitalista, "The
Managerial Revolution had already spread across the planet. Took a hundred years, half
of the eighteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century to the Industrial Revolution
dominate the world. Took about seventy years, from 1880 until the end of World War
II, to the Revolution of Productivity do the same. And less than fifty years - from 1945
to 1990 - for the Managerial Revolution also dominate the world".
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2. Beside the scientific revolutions, technological and managerial that is observed
worldwide, there are also sensible changes in the field of international relations, whose
hallmark is the existence of various supranational bodies besides the United Nations, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, such as the G7
(industrialized countries + Russia), the economic blocs (European Union, Asia-Pacific
block, Mercosur and NAFTA, among others) and more recently the G20 (+ emerging
industrialized countries).
The main consequence of the constitution of various supranational organizations is
declining sovereignty of nation-states that are losing their position as the sole organ of
global power since the end of World War II. The nation-state will not disappear. Still
long remain as the most powerful political body. However, gradually, increasingly
divide their power with other bodies, institutions and other entities that create policy.
According to Christian Harbulot in the past forty years, the economy has taken a
predominant importance in international relations. The globalization of trade has led to
a reversal of values of the notion of conflict. The transition from a subsistence economy
to a market economy has made the economic war destabilizing assume amplitude that is
equal to traditional warfare. In fact, with the interpenetration of markets, the emergence
of various spheres of influence regional (Asia, Europe, Americas, G7 and G20) and the
rise in power of national capitalisms, the notions of defense and security concern not
only the aspects of nature military (Harbulot, C., La Machine de Guerre Économique -
États-Unis, Japon, Europe, Economica, Paris, 1992, pág. 2).
It also says that Harbulot to page 151 of the same work that economic competition is
currently the backbone of the strategy of industrialized countries. The global
community must not forget the essentials that competition is the engine of the world
economy and not international solidarity. This contradiction is currently unsolvable. She
leaves the way open to war machines economical national and multinational whose
function is precisely to win the competition. The economic war that is being
implemented throughout the world, including Brazil, tends to produce dire
consequences for humanity with planetary social exclusion emergency of international
conflicts and difficult to overcome.
*Fernando Alcoforado, 73, engenheiro e doutor em Planejamento Territorial e Desenvolvimento Regional
pela Universidade de Barcelona, professor universitário e consultor nas áreas de planejamento estratégico,
planejamento empresarial, planejamento regional e planejamento de sistemas energéticos, é autor dos
livros Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000),
Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento
(Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos
Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the
Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011) e
Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), entre
outros.
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