1. The essence of the socio-economic formation

The category of socio-economic formation is central to historical materialism. It is characterized, firstly, by historicism and, secondly, by the fact that it embraces each society in its entirety. The development of this category by the founders of historical materialism made it possible to put in place of abstract reasoning about society in general, characteristic of previous philosophers and economists, a concrete analysis of various types of society, the development of which is subject to their specific laws.

Each socio-economic formation is a special social organism that differs from others no less profoundly than different biological species differ from each other. In the afterword to the 2nd edition of Capital, K. Marx cited the statement of the Russian reviewer of the book, according to which its true price lies in “... clarifying those particular laws that govern the emergence, existence, development, death of a given social organism and replacing it with another , the highest".

Unlike such categories as productive forces, the state, law, etc., which reflect various aspects of the life of society, the socio-economic formation covers all sides public life in their organic relationship. At the heart of every socio-economic formation is a certain mode of production. Production relations, taken in their totality, form the essence of this formation. The data system of production relations, which form the economic basis of the socio-economic formation, corresponds to a political, legal and ideological superstructure and certain forms of social consciousness. The structure of the socio-economic formation organically includes not only economic, but all social relations that exist in a given society, as well as certain forms of life, family, lifestyle. With a revolution in the economic conditions of production, with a change in the economic basis of society (beginning with a change in the productive forces of society, which at a certain stage of their development come into conflict with the existing relations of production), a revolution also takes place in the entire superstructure.

The study of socio-economic formations makes it possible to notice the repetition in the social orders of various countries that are at the same stage of social development. And this made it possible, according to V. I. Lenin, to move from a description of social phenomena to a strictly scientific analysis of them, investigating what is characteristic, for example, of all capitalist countries, and highlighting what distinguishes one capitalist country from another. The specific laws of development of each socio-economic formation are at the same time common to all countries in which it exists or is established. For example, there are no special laws for each individual capitalist country (USA, Great Britain, France, etc.). However, there are differences in the forms of manifestation of these laws, arising from specific historical conditions, national characteristics.

2. Development of the concept of socio-economic formation

The concept of "socio-economic formation" was introduced into science by K. Marx and F. Engels. The idea of ​​stages of human history, differing in forms of ownership, first put forward by them in The German Ideology (1845-46), runs through the works The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), The Communist Manifesto (1847-48), Wage Labor and Capital "(1849) and is most fully expressed in the preface to the work "On the Critique of Political Economy" (1858-59). Here Marx showed that each formation is a developing social production organism, and also showed how the movement from one formation to another takes place.

In "Capital" the doctrine of socio-economic formations is deeply substantiated and proved by the example of the analysis of one formation - the capitalist one. Marx did not limit himself to the study of the production relations of this formation, but showed “... the capitalist social formation as a living one - with its everyday aspects, with the actual social manifestation of class antagonism inherent in production relations, with a bourgeois political superstructure that protects the dominance of the capitalist class, with bourgeois ideas of freedom, equality etc., with bourgeois family relations.

Specific idea of ​​change in world history socio-economic formations developed and refined by the founders of Marxism as scientific knowledge accumulated. In the 50-60s. 19th century Marx considered Asiatic, ancient, feudal and bourgeois modes of production as "...progressive epochs of the economic social formation." When the studies of A. Gaksthausen, G. L. Maurer, MM Kovalevsky showed the existence of a community in all countries, and in various historical periods, including feudalism, and L. G. Morgan discovered a classless tribal society, Marx and Engels clarified their specific idea of socio-economic formation (80s). In Engels' work "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" (1884), the term "Asian mode of production" is absent, the concept of the primitive communal system is introduced, it is noted that "... for the three great epochs of civilization" (which replaced the primitive communal system) are characterized by "... three great forms enslavement ... ": slavery - in the ancient world, serfdom - in the Middle Ages, wage labor - in modern times.

Having singled out communism in his early works as a special formation based on public ownership of the means of production, and scientifically substantiating the need to replace the capitalist formation with communism, Marx later, especially in his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), developed the thesis of two phases of communism.

V. I. Lenin, who paid great attention to the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations starting from his early work(“What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?”, 1894), summarized the idea of ​​a specific change in formations preceding the communist formation in a lecture “On the State” (1919). On the whole, he joined the concept of the socio-economic formation contained in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, singling out as successively replacing each other: a society without classes - a primitive society; a society based on slavery is a slave-owning society; a society based on feudal exploitation is the feudal system and, finally, capitalist society.

In the late 20's - early 30's. among Soviet scientists there were discussions about socio-economic formations. Some authors defended the notion of a special formation of "commercial capitalism" that allegedly lay between the feudal and capitalist systems; others defended the theory of the "Asiatic mode of production" as a formation that allegedly arose in a number of countries with the disintegration of the primitive communal system; still others, criticizing both the concept of "commercial capitalism" and the concept of the "Asiatic mode of production", themselves tried to introduce a new formation - "serfdom", whose place, in their opinion, was between the feudal and capitalist systems. These concepts did not meet with the support of most scientists. As a result of the discussion, a scheme was adopted for changing socio-economic formations, corresponding to that contained in Lenin's work "On the State".

Thus, the following idea of ​​formations successively replacing each other was established: the primitive communal system, the slave-owning system, feudalism, capitalism, communism (its first phase is socialism, the second, the highest stage of development, is communist society).

The subject of a lively discussion that has unfolded since the 60s. among scientists-Marxists of the USSR and a number of other countries, the problem of pre-capitalist formations again became. During the discussions, some of its participants defended the point of view about the existence of a special formation of the Asian mode of production, some questioned the existence of the slave system as a special formation, and finally, a point of view was expressed that actually merges the slave and feudal formations into a single pre-capitalist formation. But none of these hypotheses was supported by sufficient evidence and did not form the basis of concrete historical research.

3. Sequence of change of socio-economic formations

Based on a generalization of the history of the development of mankind, Marxism identified the following main socio-economic formations that form the stages of historical progress: primitive communal system, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, communist, the first phase of which is socialism.

The primitive communal system is the first non-antagonistic socio-economic formation through which all peoples without exception passed. As a result of its decomposition, a transition to class, antagonistic socio-economic formations is carried out.

“Bourgeois relations of production,” wrote Marx, “are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production... The prehistory of human society is completed with the bourgeois social formation.” As predicted by Marx and Engels, it naturally comes to be replaced by the communist formation, which opens a truly human history. The communist formation, the stage of formation and development of which is socialism, for the first time in history creates conditions for the unlimited progress of mankind on the basis of the elimination of social inequality and the accelerated development of productive forces.

The successive change of socio-economic formations is explained primarily by the antagonistic contradictions between the new productive forces and the obsolete production relations, which at a certain stage are transformed from forms of development into fetters of the productive forces. At the same time, the general law discovered by Marx is in effect, according to which not a single socio-economic formation perishes before all the productive forces for which it gives enough space have developed, and new, higher production relations never appear earlier than in the bosom of the old. societies will mature the material conditions of their existence.

The transition from one socio-economic formation to another is accomplished through a social revolution, which resolves the antagonistic contradictions between the productive forces and production relations, as well as between the base and the superstructure.

Unlike the change of socio-economic formations, the change of different phases (stages) within the same formation (for example, pre-monopoly capitalism - imperialism) occurs without social revolutions, although it represents a qualitative leap. Within the framework of the communist formation, the development of socialism into communism takes place, carried out gradually and systematically, as a consciously directed natural process.

4. Variety of historical development

The Marxist-Leninist doctrine of socio-economic formation provides the key to understanding the unity and diversity of human history. The successive change of these formations forms the main line of human progress which defines its unity. At the same time, the development of individual countries and peoples is distinguished by considerable diversity, which is manifested, firstly, in the fact that not every people necessarily passes through all class formations, secondly, in the existence of varieties or local features, and thirdly, in availability of various transitional forms from one socio-economic formation to another.

Transitional states of society are usually characterized by the presence of various socio-economic structures, which, in contrast to a fully established economic system, do not cover the entire economy and life as a whole. They can represent both the remnants of the old and the embryos of a new socio-economic formation. History does not know "pure" formations. For example, there is no "pure" capitalism, in which there would be no elements and remnants of past eras - feudalism and even pre-feudal relations - elements and material prerequisites for a new communist formation.

To this should be added the specificity of the development of the same formation among different peoples (for example, the tribal system of the Slavs and ancient Germans differs sharply from the tribal system of the Saxons or Scandinavians at the beginning of the Middle Ages, the peoples of Ancient India or the peoples of the Middle East, Indian tribes in America or nationalities Africa, etc.).

Various forms of combination of old and new in each historical epoch, various connections of a given country with other countries and various forms and the degree of external influence on its development, and finally, the features of historical development, due to the totality of natural, ethnic, social, domestic, cultural and other factors, and the commonality of the fate and traditions of the people determined by them, which distinguish it from other peoples, testify to how the features and historical destinies of different peoples passing through the same socio-economic formation are diverse.

The diversity of historical development is associated not only with the difference in the specific conditions of the countries of the world, but also with the simultaneous existence in some of them of different social orders, as a result of the uneven pace of historical development. Throughout history, there has been interaction between countries and peoples that have gone ahead and lagged behind in their development, because a new socio-economic formation has always been first established in individual countries or a group of countries. This interaction was of a very different nature: it accelerated or, on the contrary, slowed down the course of the historical development of individual peoples.

All peoples have a common starting point for development—the primitive communal system. All the peoples of the Earth will eventually come to communism. At the same time, a number of peoples bypass one or another class socio-economic formation (for example, the ancient Germans and Slavs, the Mongols and other tribes and nationalities - the slave-owning system as a special socio-economic formation; some of them are also feudalism). At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between historical phenomena of a different order: firstly, such cases when the natural process of development of certain peoples was forcibly interrupted by the conquest of them by more developed states (as, for example, the development of Indian tribes in North America was interrupted by the invasion of European conquerors, nationalities Latin America, Aboriginal people in Australia, etc.); secondly, such processes when peoples who had previously lagged behind in their development got the opportunity, due to certain favorable historical conditions, to catch up with those who had gone ahead.

5. Periods in socio-economic formations

Each formation has its own stages, stages of development. Primitive society over the millennia of its existence has gone from a human horde to a tribal system and a rural community. Capitalist society - from manufacture to machine production, from the era of domination of free competition to the era of monopoly capitalism, which has grown into state-monopoly capitalism. The communist formation has two main phases - socialism and communism. Each such stage of development is associated with the appearance of some important features and even specific patterns, which, without canceling the general sociological laws of the socio-economic formation as a whole, introduce something qualitatively new into its development, strengthen the effect of some patterns and weaken the effect of others, introduce certain changes in the social the structure of society, the social organization of labor, the life of people, modify the superstructure of society, etc. Such stages in the development of a socio-economic formation are usually called periods or epochs. The scientific periodization of historical processes, therefore, must proceed not only from the alternation of formations, but also from epochs or periods within these formations.

From the concept of an era as a stage in the development of a socio-economic formation, one should distinguish the concept world-historical era. Worldwide historical process presents a more complex picture at any given moment than the process of development in a single country. The global development process includes different peoples at different stages of development.

A socio-economic formation designates a certain stage in the development of society, and a world-historical epoch is a certain period of history during which, due to the unevenness of the historical process, various formations can temporarily exist next to each other. At the same time, however, the main meaning and content of each era is characterized by “... which class stands at the center of this or that era, determining its main content, the main direction of its development, the main features of the historical situation of this era, etc.” . The character of a world-historical epoch is determined by those economic relations and social forces which determine the direction and, to an ever-increasing degree, the character of the historical process in a given historical period. In the 17-18 centuries. capitalist relations had not yet dominated the world, but they and the classes they had engendered, already determining the direction of world historical development, had a decisive influence on the entire process of world development. Therefore, since that time, the world-historical epoch of capitalism has been dated as a stage in world history.

At the same time, each historical epoch is characterized by a variety of social phenomena, contains typical and atypical phenomena, in each epoch there are separate partial movements either forward or backward, various deviations from the average type and pace of movement. There are also transitional epochs in history from one socio-economic formation to another.

6. Transition from one formation to another

The transition from one socio-economic formation to another is carried out in a revolutionary way.

In cases where socio-economic formations same type(for example, slavery, feudalism, capitalism are based on the exploitation of workers by the owners of the means of production), a process of gradual maturation of a new society in the bowels of the old one can be observed (for example, capitalism in the bowels of feudalism), but the completion of the transition from the old society to the new acts as a revolutionary leap.

With a fundamental change in economic and all other relations, the social revolution is distinguished by its special depth (see Socialist revolution) and lays the foundation for a whole transitional period, during which the revolutionary transformation of society is carried out and the foundations of socialism are created. The content and duration of this transition period are determined by the level of economic and cultural development of the country, the severity of class conflicts, the international situation, etc.

Due to the unevenness of historical development, the transformation of various aspects of the life of society does not coincide entirely in time. Thus, in the 20th century, an attempt at the socialist transformation of society took place in countries that were relatively less developed, forced to catch up with the most developed capitalist countries that had gone ahead in technical and economic terms.

In world history, transitional epochs are the same natural phenomenon as the established socio-economic formations, and in their totality cover significant periods of history.

Each new formation, denying the previous one, preserves and develops all its achievements in the field of material and spiritual culture. The transition from one formation to another, capable of creating higher production capacities, a more perfect system of economic, political and ideological relations, is the content of historical progress.

7. The meaning of the theory of socio-economic formations

The methodological significance of the theory of socio-economic formations lies primarily in the fact that it makes it possible to single out material social relations as determining from the system of all other relations, to establish the recurrence of social phenomena, and to elucidate the laws underlying this recurrence. This makes it possible to approach the development of society as a natural-historical process. At the same time, it allows revealing the structure of society and the functions of its constituent elements, revealing the system and interaction of all social relations.

Secondly, the theory of socio-economic formations makes it possible to solve the question of the relationship between the general sociological laws of development and the specific laws of a particular formation.

Thirdly, the theory of socio-economic formations provides a scientific basis for the theory of class struggle, makes it possible to identify which methods of production give rise to classes and which ones, what are the conditions for the emergence and destruction of classes.

Fourthly, the socio-economic formation makes it possible to establish not only the unity of social relations among peoples standing at the same stage of development, but also to identify specific national and historical features of the formation of a particular people that distinguish the history of this people from the history of others. peoples.

Sociological concept of K. Marx

The years of the life of K. Marx - 1818-1883.

The significant works of K. Marx include "Capital", "Poverty of Philosophy", "Civil War in France", "On the Critique of Political Economy", etc. Together with F. Engels, K. Marx wrote such works. Like "German Ideology", "Manifesto of the Communist Party", etc.

The ideas of K. Marx and F. Engels are fundamental. They had a great influence on the development of philosophical, sociological, socio-political thought throughout the world. Many Western conceptions of social dynamics arose in opposition to the ideas of Marx.

Sociology of Marx is the theory of social development of society. In interpreting the historical process, Marx for the first time applies principle of materialistic understanding of history(a philosophical principle that justifies the primacy of social being and the secondary nature of social consciousness). In other words, the defining moment in the historical process is the production and reproduction of real life, that is, economic conditions, material relations that determine the totality of ideological, political, legal, and other relations associated with public consciousness.

Marx's position is defined as economic determinism(philosophical position according to which economic, material relations determine all other relations).

However, not all so simple. Recognizing the primacy of economic relations, Marx did not deny the influence of political, ideological, and other factors. In particular, he noted that in certain situations (crisis, war, etc.) the determining influence of political factors is possible.

Marx's fundamental concept is the theory socio-economic formation, which covers all aspects of public life in integrity and interaction. In this concept, Marx for the first time from the standpoint of a systematic approach considers society as an objective, self-developing reality. At the same time, contradictions and conflicts in material life act as a source of self-development.

Theory of socio-economic formation

The main concepts of the theory of socio-economic formation include the following:

1. socio-economic formation - a historically defined stage in the development of society, which is characterized by its own mode of production and (conditioned by it) a set of social, political, legal, ideological relations, norms and institutions;

2. production - the process by which people transform natural objects to meet their needs; by their own activity mediate, regulate and control the metabolism between themselves and nature. There are different types of production (production of material goods, labor, production relations, social structure, etc.) Among them, the main ones are two main types of production: the production of means of production and the production of the person himself;

3. reproduction– the process of self-recovery and self-renewal of social systems. There are also various types of reproduction, among which the main ones are the reproduction of the means of production and the reproduction human life;

4. mode of production- historically specific unity of productive forces and production relations that determine the social, political, spiritual processes of social life;

5. basis- the totality of production relations that make up the economic structure of society at a given stage of development;

6. superstructure- a set of political, legal, spiritual, philosophical, religious and other views and institutions corresponding to them;

7. productive forces- a system of subjective (labor) and material (means of production, tools, technologies) factors necessary for the transformation of natural substances into products needed by a person;

8. industrial relations- relations that develop between people in the process of production.

Figure 1. shows the structure of the socio-economic formation

Rice. 1. The structure of the socio-economic formation

Marx identifies 5 formations, three of them are class formations. Each class formation corresponds to two main classes, which are antagonistic(antagonism - irreconcilable contradiction, conflict):

1. primitive communal system - there are no classes yet;

2. slave society - slaves and slave owners;

3. feudal society - peasants and feudal lords;

4. capitalism (bourgeois society) - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (working class);

5. communism - there will be no classes.

According to Marx, the historical process is characterized by:

systemic;

revolutionary;

· irreversibility;

unilinearity - from simple to complex;

progressiveness.

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The change in socio-economic formations, as well as the development of technology within a certain social system, leads to changes in the forms and methods of organizing production.

Socio-economic formations are changing gradually. Social development is the integrity of evolutionary and revolutionary changes. In the process of the development of society, revolutionary changes provide the possibility of creating new, higher in comparison with the previous states of society and social structures, and in all areas of social life, in the base and superstructure. The spasmodicity of revolutionary changes lies in the fact that the formation of new structures occurs in a relatively short period of time.

There is a change in socio-economic formations, and not within certain sociohistorical organisms, but on the scale of human society as a whole. Of course, in the process of this transition, there were two successive changes of socio-economic types within the inferior sociohistorical organisms involved in this process, namely 1) the replacement of the original inferior type of society by a special socio-economic paraformation, and then 2) the replacement of this paraformation by a new one, never before existed socio-economic formation.

With the change of socio-economic formations, accounting changes and improves, its role increases.

The origin and change of socio-economic formations suggest the historical conditionality of accounting.

The change in socio-economic formations discussed above occurred through a historical relay race. But one should not think that any historical relay race presupposes a change in socio-economic formations. In addition to inter-formation historical relay races, intra-formation historical relay races are quite possible and have taken place, when newly emerged sociohistorical organisms of a certain type assimilated the achievements of pre-existing sociors belonging to the same socio-economic type.

Regarding the change of socio-economic formations, there have been and are ongoing very heated discussions, especially about whether socio-economic formations are replaced in the historical sequence of their existence, as a certain inevitability, i.e. can individual societies jump over some phases of their development, i.e. individual socio-economic formations. Today, many believe that individual societies in their development do not necessarily have to go through all socio-economic formations.

With such a change in socio-economic formations, there is a genuine transfer of the historical baton from one set of socio-historical organisms to another. Sociors of the second group do not go through the stage at which the sociors of the first were, they do not repeat their development. Entering the highway of human history, they immediately begin to move from the place where the sociohistorical organisms that were previously superimposed stopped.

The theory of the development and change of socio-economic formations arose as a kind of quintessence of the achievements of all the social sciences of its time, primarily historiology and political economy. The scheme of development and change of socio-economic formations, created by the founders of Marxism, was based on the periodization of written world history, established by that time in historical science, in which ancient Eastern, ancient, medieval and modern acted as world epochs.

Thus, the change of socio-economic formations was conceived as taking place exclusively within sociohistorical organisms.

According to Marxism, the change of socio-economic formations occurs mainly under the influence of economic factors rooted in the mode of production, which are associated with other factors of this process, including socio-political, ideological and related to the field of spiritual culture. At its core, this is a revolutionary process in which one type of society is replaced by another.

All of the above brings us closer to understanding the forms of change in socio-economic formations in the history of human society, but not much so far. One of these forms has been known for a long time.

The question arises whether the above understanding of the change in socio-economic formations was inherent in the founders of historical materialism themselves, or whether it arose later and was a coarsening, simplification, or even distortion of their own views. Undoubtedly, the classics of Marxism have such statements that allow just such, and not any other interpretation.

However, the latter changes not only in connection with a change in the socio-economic formation. Under the conditions of the same formation, its changes also take place, which depend on the change in the balance of class forces within the country and in the international arena. Thus, in capitalist society, as the class struggle intensifies and the class consciousness of the proletariat develops, its class organizations (trade unions, political parties) arise, which over time begin to play an ever greater role in political life society, despite the opposition of the bourgeoisie. An important regularity in the change in the political organization of society is the increase in the degree of organization of the working masses. The growing role of the masses in social development is a universal law of history.

So, consideration of the historical process in the period of pre-capitalist modes of production confirms a certain regularity in the change of socio-economic formations, which is manifested in the correlation and sequence of social (political), technical and production revolutions.

One of the ways of studying society is the formational way.

Formation is a word of Latin origin, meaning "formation, appearance." What is a formation? What types of formations exist? What are their features?

Formation

Formation is a society at a certain stage of historical development, main criterion which is the development of the economy, the method of production of material goods, the level of development of productive forces, the totality of production relations. It all makes up basis, that is, the basis of society. Rising above him superstructure.

Let us consider in more detail the concepts of "basis" and "superstructure", put forward by K. Marx.

Basis - it's different material relations in society, that is, production relations that develop in the process of production of material goods, their exchange and distribution.

superstructure includes various ideological relations(legal, political), related views, ideas, theories, as well as relevant organizations - the state, political parties, public organizations and foundations, etc.

The formational approach to the study of society was put forward in the 19th century Karl Marx. He also identified the types of formations.

Five types of formations according to K. Marx

• Primitive communal formation: low level of development of productive forces and production relations, ownership of tools and means of production - communal. Management was carried out by all members of society or by the leader, who was elected as an authoritative person. The superstructure is primitive.
• slave formation: means of production, tools were in the hands of slave owners. They also owned the slaves whose labor was exploited. The superstructure expressed the interests of the slave owners.
• feudal formation: the means of production and most importantly, the land belonged to the feudal lords. The peasants were not the owners of the land, they rented it and paid dues for it or worked out the corvée. Religion played a huge role in the superstructure, defending the interests of those in power and at the same time uniting feudal lords and peasants into a spiritual unity.
• capitalist formation: the means of production belonged to the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat, the working class, the producer of material goods, was deprived of the right to own the means of production, selling their labor power, working in factories and factories. Personally, the proletariat is free. The add-on is complex: political struggle All members of society participate in the movement, public organizations and parties appear. The main contradiction of the formation arose: between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation of the produced product. Only a socialist revolution could solve it, and then the next formation was established.
• communist formation: characterized by a social form of ownership of the means of production. All members of society participate in the creation of wealth and their distribution, there is a complete satisfaction of all the needs of society. Today we understand that communism is a utopia. However, for a long time they believed in him, even Khrushchev N.S. hoped that communism would be built in the USSR by 1980.

Material prepared: Melnikova Vera Aleksandrovna

Dyachenko V.I.

We already know from previous lectures that the Marxist theory of communism is based on a materialistic understanding of history and the dialectical mechanism. economic development society.

Let me remind you that the essence of the materialistic understanding of history according to the classics is that the causes of all historical changes and upheavals must be sought not in the minds of people, but in the economic relations of a particular historical period.

And the dialectical mechanism of economic development is the replacement of one mode of production by another more perfect one through the dialectical removal of the contradictions between the productive forces that developed in a particular era and the relations of production lagging behind them by an evolutionary-revolutionary path.

Proceeding from the materialistic understanding of history, Marx called the periods of human history economic social formations.

He used the word "formation" as a working term by analogy with the then (beginning of the second half of the 19th century) geological periodization of the history of the Earth - "primary formation", "secondary formation", "tertiary formation".

Thus, the economic social formation in Marxism is understood as a certain historical period in the development of human society, which is characterized by a certain way of producing life during this period.

Marx presented the entire human history as a progressive change of formations, the removal of an old formation by a new, more perfect one. The primary formation was removed by the secondary formation, and the secondary formation must be removed by the tertiary formation. In this finds expression the scientific dialectical-materialist approach of Marx, the law of negation of negation, Hegel's triad.

According to Marx, each formation is based on the corresponding mode of production as a dialectically bifurcated unity of productive forces and production relations. Therefore, Marx called formations economic social.

The basis of the primary formation in the Marxist concept is represented by the primitive communal mode of production. Then, through the Asiatic mode of production, there was a transition to a large secondary economic social formation. Within the secondary formation, the ancient (slave-owning), feudal (serfdom) and bourgeois (capitalist) modes of production successively succeeded each other. The large secondary economic social formation must be replaced by a tertiary formation with a communist mode of production.

In their works and letters (“German Ideology”, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, “Toward a Critique of Political Economy”, “Capital”, Anti-Dühring, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, in a number of letters) Marx and Engels scientifically , theoretically substantiated how the historical removal of some economic relations by others took place.

In the German Ideology, in the section: “Conclusions of the materialist understanding of history: the continuity of the historical process, the transformation of history into world history, the need for a communist revolution,” the classics noted: “History is nothing but a successive change of separate generations, each of which uses materials, capitals, productive forces transferred to it by all previous generations; By virtue of this, this generation, on the one hand, continues the inherited activity under completely changed conditions, and on the other hand, modifies the old conditions through a completely changed activity. In this work, they analyzed various segments of human history in terms of their characteristic economic relations.

Marx substantiated the provisions formulated by C. Fourier in his works of the very beginning of the nineteenth century that the history of the development of mankind is divided into stages: savagery, patriarchy, barbarism and civilization, that each historical phase has not only its own ascending, but also a descending line.

In turn, a contemporary of Marx and Engels, the American historian and ethnographer Lewis Henry Morgan divided the entire history of mankind into 3 epochs: savagery, barbarism and civilization. This periodization was used by Engels in his 1884 work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

So, according to Marxist theory, a certain historical period, i.e., an economic social formation, corresponds to its own mode of production, as a dialectical unity of productive forces and production relations.

The classics proceeded from the fact that societies based on the same system of economic relations, based on the same mode of production, belong to the same type. Societies based on different modes of production are different types society. These types of society are called small economic social formations. There are as many of them as there are basic methods of production.

And just as the main modes of production are not only types, but also stages in the development of social production, economic social formations are such types of society that are at the same time stages of world-historical development.

In their works, the classics explored five sequentially replacing each other modes of production: primitive communal, Asian, slave-owning, feudal and capitalist. They substantiated that the sixth mode of production, the communist one, is replacing the capitalist mode of production.

In the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859, Marx formulates a very important conclusion that communists must not forget. This is a conclusion about the prerequisites for the change of one social formation by another. “No social formation will perish before, - points out Marx, - than all the productive forces will develop, for which it gives enough scope, and new, higher production relations will never appear before the material conditions for their existence ripen in the bosom of the old society itself. Therefore, humanity always sets itself only such tasks that it can solve, since upon closer examination it always turns out that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or, at least, are in the process of becoming. He confirms this conclusion in the first volume of Capital. In the "Preface" to the first edition of 1867, he writes: "Society, even if it has attacked the trail of the natural law of its development - and the ultimate goal of my work is the discovery of the economic law of motion modern society, - can neither skip the natural phases of development, nor cancel the latter by decrees. But it can shorten and alleviate the pangs of childbirth.

Recently, this theory has had a lot of opponents. The most detailed scientific analysis of the available points of view is given in the work of N. N. Kadrin. Problems of periodization of historical macroprocesses. History and Mathematics: Models and theories. Kadrin notes that in “the years of perestroika, the prevailing view was that the theory of formations should be replaced by the theory of civilizations. Subsequently, a compromise opinion spread about the need for a "synthesis" between these two approaches. What is the difference between the civilizational approach and the Marxist formational approach? The civilizational approach is based not on economic relations, as in Marx, but on cultural ones. Civilizationists argue that various cultures have constantly arisen in the history of mankind, for example, the Mayan culture, Eastern cultures, etc. They sometimes existed in parallel, developed and died. Then other cultures emerged. There was supposedly no linear connection between them. Currently, in the social sciences and history, there are not two, but already four groups of theories that explain in different ways the basic laws of the emergence, further change, and sometimes death of complex human systems. In addition to various one-linear theories (Marxism, neo-evolutionism, modernization theories, etc.) and the civilizational approach, he notes, there are multilinear theories, according to which there are several possible options for social evolution.

An article by the historian Yuri Semyonov is also devoted to the consideration of this problem, which is called: "Marx's theory of socio-economic formations and modernity." The article is posted online.

Semyonov states the fact that in Russia, before the revolution and abroad, both before and now, the materialistic understanding of history was criticized. In the USSR, such criticism began sometime in 1989 and acquired a landslide character after August 1991. Actually, all this can be called criticism only with a big stretch. It was a real persecution. And they began to crack down on the materialistic understanding of history (historical materialism) in the same ways that it was previously defended. Historians in Soviet times they said: whoever is against the materialistic understanding of history is not a Soviet person. The argument of the "democrats" was no less simple: in Soviet times there was a Gulag, which means that historical materialism is false from beginning to end. The materialistic understanding of history, as a rule, was not refuted. Just as a matter of course, they spoke of his complete scientific failure. And those few who nevertheless tried to refute it acted according to a well-established scheme: attributing deliberate nonsense to historical materialism, they argued that it was nonsense, and triumphed.

The offensive against the materialistic understanding of history that unfolded after August 1991 was greeted with sympathy by many historians. Some of them even actively joined the fight. One of the reasons for the hostility of a considerable number of specialists to historical materialism was that it had previously been imposed on them by force. This inevitably gave rise to a feeling of protest. Another reason was that Marxism, having become the dominant ideology and a means of justifying the “socialist” (in reality, having nothing to do with socialism) orders existing in our country, was reborn: from a coherent system of scientific views into a set of stamped phrases used as spells and slogans. Real Marxism has been replaced by the appearance of Marxism - pseudo-Marxism. This affected all parts of Marxism, not excluding the materialistic understanding of history. What F. Engels feared most of all happened. "... materialistic method, he wrote, “turns into its opposite when it is used not as a guiding thread in historical research, but as a ready-made template according to which historical facts are cut and redrawn”

He notes that the existence of slave-owning, feudal and capitalist modes of production is now essentially recognized by almost all scientists, including those who do not share the Marxist point of view and do not use the term "mode of production". Slave-owning, feudal and capitalist modes of production are not only types of social production, but also stages of its development. After all, there is no doubt that the beginnings of capitalism appear only in the 15th-16th centuries, that it was preceded by feudalism, which took shape, at the earliest, only in the 6th-9th centuries, and that the flowering of ancient society was associated with the widespread use of slaves in production. The existence of a continuity between the ancient, feudal and capitalist economic systems is also indisputable.

Further, the author considers the inconsistency of understanding the change in socio-economic formations, as their change in individual countries, that is, within individual socio-historical organisms. He writes: “In K. Marx's theory of socio-economic formations, each formation appears as a human society in general of a certain type, and thus as a pure, ideal historical type. Primitive society in general, Asiatic society in general, pure ancient society, etc. figure in this theory. Accordingly, the change of social formations appears in it as the transformation of a society of one type in its pure form into a society of another, higher type, also in its pure form. For example, a pure ancient society in general developed into a pure feudal society in general, a pure feudal society into a pure capitalist society, etc. But in historical reality, human society has never been one single socio-historical pure organism. It has always been a huge multitude of social organisms. And specific socio-economic formations have never existed as pure ones in historical reality either. Each formation has always existed only as that fundamental common thing that was inherent in all historical societies one type. In itself, such a discrepancy between theory and reality is nothing reprehensible. It always takes place in any science. After all, each of them takes the essence of phenomena in its purest form. But in this form, the essence never exists in reality, because each of them considers necessity, regularity, law in its purest form, but there are no pure laws in the world.

... The interpretation of the change of formations as a consistent change in the type of individual societies that existed was to a certain extent in accordance with the facts of the history of Western Europe in modern times. The replacement of feudalism by capitalism took place here, as a rule, in the form of a qualitative transformation of the existing modes of production in individual countries. … The scheme of the change of formations outlined by K. Marx in the preface to the “Critique of Political Economy” to a certain extent agrees with what we know about the transition from a primitive society to the first class - Asian. But it does not work at all when we are trying to understand how the second class formation, the ancient one, arose. It was not at all that new productive forces had matured in the depths of Asiatic society, which became crowded within the framework of the old production relations, and that, as a result, a social revolution took place, as a result of which Asiatic society turned into ancient society. Nothing even remotely similar happened. No new productive forces have arisen in the depths of Asiatic society. Not a single Asian society, taken by itself, has been transformed into an ancient one. Antique societies appeared in territories where societies of the Asiatic type either never existed at all, or where they had long since disappeared, and these new class societies arose out of the pre-class societies that preceded them.

One of the first, if not the first of the Marxists who tried to find a way out of the situation was GV Plekhanov. He came to the conclusion that Asian and ancient societies are not two consecutive phases of development, but two in parallel. existing type society. Both of these options equally grew out of primitive society, and they owe their difference to the peculiarities of the geographical environment.

Semyonov rightly concludes that “the change in socio-economic formations was conceived as occurring exclusively within individual countries. Accordingly, socio-economic formations acted, first of all, as stages of development not of human society as a whole, but of individual countries. The only reason to consider them stages of world-historical development was given only by the fact that all or, at least, most of the countries “passed through” them. Of course, researchers who consciously or unconsciously adhered to such an understanding of history could not but see that there were facts that did not fit into their ideas. But they mainly paid attention only to those of these facts that could be interpreted as a “pass” by one or another “people” of one or another socio-economic formation, and explained them as an always possible and even inevitable deviation from the norm caused by the confluence of certain specific historical circumstances.

… Soviet philosophers and historians, for the most part, took the path of denying the formational difference between ancient Eastern and ancient societies. As they argued, both ancient Eastern and ancient societies were equally slave-owning. The differences between them were only that some arose earlier, while others later. In the ancient societies that arose somewhat later, slavery acted in more developed forms than in the societies of the Ancient East. That's actually all. And those of our historians who did not want to put up with the position that the ancient Eastern and ancient societies belonged to the same formation, inevitably, most often without even realizing it themselves, again and again resurrected the idea of ​​G. V. Plekhanov. As they argued, two parallel and independent lines of development go from primitive society, one of which leads to Asian society, and the other to ancient society.

Things were not much better with the application of Marx's scheme of changing formations to the transition from ancient to feudal society. The last centuries of the existence of ancient society are characterized not by the rise of productive forces, but, on the contrary, by their continuous decline. This was fully recognized by F. Engels. "General impoverishment, the decline of trade, crafts and arts, the reduction of population, the desolation of cities, the return of agriculture to more low level- such, - he wrote, - was the end result of Roman world domination”. As he repeatedly emphasized, ancient society had reached a “dead end”. The way out of this impasse was opened only by the Germans, who, having crushed the Western Roman Empire, introduced a new mode of production - the feudal one. And they could do it because they were barbarians. But having written all this, F. Engels in no way coordinated what was said with the theory of socio-economic formations.

An attempt to do this was made by some of our historians, who tried to comprehend the historical process in their own way. They proceeded from the fact that Germanic society was indisputably barbarian, that is, pre-class, and that it was from it that feudalism arose. From this they concluded that from primitive society there are not two, but three equal lines of development, one of which leads to Asian society, the other to ancient, and the third to feudal. In order to somehow harmonize this view with Marxism, the position was put forward that Asian, ancient and feudal societies are not independent formations and, in any case, not successively changing stages of world-historical development, but equal modifications of one and the same formations are secondary. The idea of ​​one unified pre-capitalist class formation has become widespread in our literature.

The idea of ​​one pre-capitalist class formation was usually combined explicitly or implicitly with the idea of ​​multilinear development. But these ideas could exist separately. Since all attempts to discover in the development of the countries of the East in the period from the VIII century. n. e. until the middle of the 19th century. n. e. ancient, feudal and capitalist stages ended in collapse, then a number of scientists concluded that in the case of the change of slave ownership by feudalism, and the latter by capitalism, we are dealing not with a general pattern, but only with the Western European line of evolution and that the development of mankind is not unilinear, but multilinear. Of course, at that time all researchers who held such views sought (some sincerely and some not so much) to prove that the recognition of the multi-linear nature of development is in full agreement with Marxism.

In reality, of course, this was, regardless of the desire and will of the supporters of such views, a departure from the view of the history of mankind as a single process that constitutes the essence of the theory of socio-economic formations. The recognition of the multilinear nature of historical development, which was reached by some Russian historians back in the days of the formally undivided domination of Marxism, consistently carried out, inevitably leads to a denial of the unity of world history.

With the progressive development of human society as a whole, the supporters of the classical interpretation of the change of formations also had serious problems. After all, it was quite obvious that the change in the stages of progressive development in different societies was far from being synchronous. Let's say, by the beginning of the 19th century, some societies were still primitive, others were pre-class, others were "Asian", fourth were feudal, and fifth were already capitalist. The question is, at what stage of historical development was human society as a whole at that time? And in more general setting it was a question of signs by which it was possible to judge what stage of progress human society as a whole had reached in a given period of time. And the supporters of the classical version did not give any answer to this question. They totally bypassed it. Some of them did not notice him at all, while others tried not to notice him.

“If we sum up some results,” Semyonov notes, “we can say that a significant drawback of the classical version of the theory of socio-economic formations is that it focuses only on “vertical” connections, connections in time, and even then they are understood extremely one-sidedly. , only as links between different stages of development within the same socio-historical organisms. As for the “horizontal” connections, they were not given any importance in the theory of socio-economic formations. Such an approach made it impossible to understand the progressive development of human society as a single whole, the change in the stages of this development on the scale of all mankind, that is, a true understanding of the unity of world history, closed the road to genuine historical unitarism.

A different point of view was held by the so-called historical pluralists, who believed that society developed in a multilinear fashion. These include "civilizationists", who are talking about the development of not the entire human society, but about individual civilizations. “It is not difficult to understand that, according to this point of view, there is neither human society as a whole, nor world history as a single process. Accordingly, there can be no question of the stages of development of human society as a whole, and thus of the epochs of world history.

… The works of historical pluralists not only drew attention to the connections between simultaneously existing separate societies and their systems, but forced a new look at the “vertical” connections in history. It became clear that they could by no means be reduced to relations between stages of development within certain individual societies.

... By now, the plural-cyclical approach to history ... has exhausted all its possibilities and is a thing of the past. Attempts to revive it, which are now being made in our science, cannot lead to anything but embarrassment. This is clearly evidenced by the articles and speeches of our "civilizationists". In essence, they all represent a transfusion from empty to empty.

But the version of the linear-stage understanding of history is also in conflict with historical reality. And this contradiction has not been overcome even in the latest unitary-stage concepts (neo-evolutionism in ethnology and sociology, the concepts of modernization and industrial and post-industrial society).

Such is the point of view of Yuri Semyonov on the problems of the Marxist theory of the change of socio-economic formations.

The theoretical problem of the correlation of civilizational and modernist approaches with the formational theory of Marx is also considered in the book by Vyacheslav Volkov. (See Russia: interregnum. Historical experience of Russia's modernization (second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries). St. Petersburg: Politekhnika-Service, 2011). In it, the author comes to the conclusion that the history of human society is moving according to the scenario predicted by Marx and Engels. However, the formational theory does not exclude both civilizational and modernist approaches.

I will also draw your attention to the study of this problem by D. Fomin from the Southern Bureau of the Marxist Labor Party. He is a linguist by profession.

A refined translation of Marx's work "On the Critique of Political Economy" led him to the conclusion that "in the history of mankind, a large 'economic social formation' should be singled out; Within this "economic social formation" one should distinguish between progressive epochs - ancient, feudal and modern, bourgeois, modes of production, which, in turn, can also be called "social formations""

He writes: “Marx's periodization of human history differs significantly from the so-called. “Marxist-Leninist five-membered system”, i.e., “five socio-economic formations”! Stalin wrote about the five socio-economic formations (see Stalin I. Questions of Leninism. Gospolitizdat, 1947. He is also “On Dialectical and Historical Materialism”. Gospolitizdat. 1949., p. 25).

Fomin clarifies that, in contrast to the Marxist-Leninist periodization of history, Marx essentially distinguishes the following dialectical triad:

1) the primary social formation based on common property, otherwise - archaic communism. This formation did not disappear from all peoples at once. Moreover, when some peoples had already fully developed the secondary formation, which had gone through a number of stages, including slavery and serfdom, the peoples who remained within the framework of the primary formation continued their stage-by-stage development. Since the central institution of the primary formation is the rural community, then, of course, we are talking about its evolution. This includes the history of the development of Russia.

2) a secondary social formation based on private property. As we have seen, Marx also called this formation "economic". Within the framework of this secondary formation, Marx distinguishes the stages: the ancient mode of production (in other words, slave-owning), the feudal mode of production (otherwise, serfdom). Finally, the highest development of the economic social formation is the capitalist relation, which "develops at a stage of development that is itself the result of a whole series of previous stages of development." Marx wrote: “The level of labor productivity from which the capitalist relation proceeds is not something given by nature, but something created historically, where labor has long since left its primitive state.” And the secondary formation is characterized by the commodity nature of production in it.

3) finally, the "tertiary" formation. A dialectical transition to the highest state of collectivism - post-capitalist (in general - post-private property and, of course, post-commodity-money) communism. As already noted, the dialectical law, the negation of negation, finds expression in this.

Fomin rightly notes that the scientific “dialectical-materialist approach of Marx to the periodization of human history is also characterized by the fact that he:

1. recognized the legitimacy of allocation within the primary and secondary formations of other periods ( different ways production, as well as transitory ways, albeit on a general format basis);
2. pointed out, as we have seen, the interaction and interpenetration of these modes of production and ways of life, especially since on the globe coexisted in his time not only different stages of development of the secondary formation, but even of the primary. And if we take the Russian agricultural community, then even an intermediate step between the primary and secondary formations ...;
3. emphasized that high technologies have developed only among those peoples who have completely gone through both formations - both primary and secondary.

In his famous Letter to the editors of Otechestvennye Zapiski (1877), Marx specifically emphasized the following: “If Russia tends to become a capitalist nation along the lines of the nations of Western Europe, then last years it has worked hard in this direction—it will not achieve this without first converting a considerable part of its peasants into proletarians; and after that, having already found itself in the bosom of the capitalist system, it will be subject to its inexorable laws, like other impious peoples. That's all. But this is not enough for my criticism. He absolutely needs to turn my historical sketch of the emergence of capitalism into Western Europe into the historical-philosophical theory of the universal path along which all peoples are fatally doomed to follow, whatever the historical conditions in which they find themselves, in order to ultimately arrive at that economic formation, which, along with the greatest flourishing productive forces of social labor and the most comprehensive development of man. But I apologize to him. That would be both too flattering and too embarrassing for me. Let's take an example. In various places in Capital I have mentioned the fate that befell the plebeians of ancient Rome. Initially, these were free peasants, each cultivating, each on his own, his own small plots. In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The very movement which separated them from their means of production and subsistence entailed not only the formation of large landed property, but also the formation of large money capitals. Thus, one fine day, on the one hand, there were free people, deprived of everything except their labor power, and on the other hand, for the exploitation of their labor, the owners of all acquired wealth. What happened? The Roman proletarians became not wage-workers, but an idle "tow" (a "mob", more contemptible than the recent "poor whites" of the southern part of the United States, and at the same time, not a capitalist, but a slave-owning mode of production developed. Thus, events are strikingly similar , but taking place in different historical settings, led to completely different results. By studying each of these evolutions separately and then comparing them, it is easy to find the key to understanding this phenomenon; but you can never achieve this understanding using a universal master key in the form of some common historical and philosophical theory, the highest virtue of which lies in its suprahistoricity ". Consequently, Marx did not at all imagine that before the onset of communism, all peoples must go through all the stages of the two previous formations, including here capitalism. However, at the same time, peoples who have not passed through capitalism (even, perhaps, through other stages of development of the secondary formation in their class classical form!), will also enter communism, only based on high technologies obtained by peoples who have passed through the secondary formation to the end, i.e. through the most developed capitalism. Here again, materialistic dialectics.

Fomin also notes that “Marx and Engels did not consider the Asian mode of production within the framework of a privately owned (i.e., secondary) formation. In 1853, an exchange of opinions took place between them, during which they found out that “At the basis of all phenomena in the East lies the absence of private ownership of land”. Since, however, on the basis of the "Asiatic mode of production" a powerful statehood arose - "Eastern despotism" (the solid basis of which were "idyllic rural communities"), the "Asiatic mode of production" should be recognized as a kind of transitional stage between the primary and secondary formations ... And indeed, just societies with such a mode of production, for example, the Cretan-Minoan civilization, preceded the ancient mode of production, which originally developed in Ancient Greece ”... This is the point of view of D. Fomin, which, in my opinion, is closest to classical Marxism (MRP website: marxistparty.ru).

However, it should be clarified that the Asiatic mode of production really did not know the relations of private appropriation of land, but the relations of private property already existed. Private property, according to the justified opinion of Yu. I. Semenov, was state property, which was disposed of by the despot and his retinue. (Semyonov Yu. I. Political ("Asian") mode of production: essence and place in the history of mankind and Russia. 2nd ed., revised and supplemented. M., URSS, 2011).

As for the transition from slavery to feudalism not through revolution, it should also be borne in mind that, according to the founders of communist theory, class struggle does not necessarily lead to a revolutionary change of formation. In the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" they, relying on the facts of history, indicate that the class struggle can end " common destruction of the fighting classes". This, apparently, happened in the Western part of the Roman Empire, which fell into decay as a result of the inefficiency of slave labor and the constant uprisings of slaves against slave owners. This led to the death of the struggling classes and the subjugation of this part of the Roman Empire by the Germanic tribes, who brought with them elements of feudalism.

Within the framework of Marxist formational theory, it would also be appropriate to consider the idea put forward by the communists of the GDR in the 60s of the last century about socialism as an independent economic social formation. This idea was picked up by some Soviet theorists. Of course, it seems to have been planted in the interests of those in power, as it would perpetuate the dominance of the then party and state nomenklatura. This idea was attributed to the creative development of Marxism. With her, some communists are worn even now. However, it should be noted that it has nothing to do with Marxism, since it denies the Marxist dialectical approach, being a return from dialectics to metaphysics. The point is that in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx represents the communist formation in development: first, the first phase, and then a higher phase. V. I. Lenin, following G. V. Plekhanov, called the first phase of communism socialism (see, for example, his work “State and Revolution”).

An analysis of the text of the "Critique of the Gotha Program" allows us to conclude that the first phase of communism (socialism) for Marx is a transitional period from capitalism to full communism, as he writes about the shortcomings that are "inevitable in the first phase of communist society, when it just emerges after long labor pains from capitalist society.

Marx called this phase the period of the revolutionary transformation of capitalism into communism. He explained: “Between capitalist and communist society lies a period of revolutionary transformation of the former into the latter. This period also corresponds to the political transition period, and the state of this period cannot be anything other than revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat» . (See Marx K. and Engels F. Soch., vol. 19, p. 27). In this regard, one can hardly agree with some authors who believe that here Marx is talking about an independent transitional period as a stage of development before the first phase of communism. That is, the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the first phase of communism, but an independent period before it. But the analysis of the cited text does not give grounds for such a conclusion. Apparently, it was inspired by the Leninist design. According to Lenin, the transition from capitalism to full communism due to the underdevelopment of the productive forces, as it was in tsarist Russia, can consist of two stages: first, the creation of an economic base for the first phase of communism (socialism), and then the first phase of communism begins.

But such a theoretical construction is also not within the framework of Marxist theory, which, as noted, denies the possibility of a transition to communism in a separate, and even backward, country with underdeveloped productive forces. The truth of this construction is not confirmed by socio-historical practice in connection with the death of the USSR. The same fate befell all other countries where the Soviet model was introduced. It turned out to be a utopia, which cannot be considered a development of Marxism, since it denies it in almost all parts.

So, the classical Marxist theory proceeds from the fact that the entire past human history is divided into two large periods, called economic social formations by the classics: primary and secondary and their transitional forms. Within them, there was a change in production methods from less perfect to more perfect, civilizations developed.

Marx based this periodization on the mode of production that prevailed in a given historical period. This does not mean at all that this mode of production encompassed all mankind at the same time. But he was dominant. If we take, for example, the ancient (slave-owning) mode of production, which lasted from about the 4th millennium BC. e. until the 6th century AD, this does not mean that it covered all countries and all peoples, but it was dominant and covered peoples living on a large territory of the planet. Having originated on the territory of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the slave-owning mode of production reached its highest development in Ancient Greece (5th-4th centuries BC) and in Ancient Rome (2nd century BC - 2nd century AD). ). It must be borne in mind that the Roman Empire with the slave-owning (ancient) mode of production extended its dominion to the countries and peoples of Western Europe, North Africa, etc. But along with the ancient mode of production, there were also primitive, pre-class and Asian societies that developed in primary formation.

Gradually, the slave-owning production relations that developed within the relations of the slave-owning form of private property began to hamper the development of productive forces due to the low productivity of slave labor. Slaves by that time many times exceeded the free population of the Roman Empire. As a result, the ancient (slave-owning) society by the 3rd c. n. e. went into a dead end. There was a general decline. The fall of slavery was accelerated by slave revolts and the defeat of the Western Roman Empire by the Germans, who developed feudal relations.

Feudal relations of production, which developed within the relations of the feudal form of private property, dominated Western Europe until the beginning of the 16th century. But this does not mean that they covered all the peoples of the world. Along with it, in other parts of the planet, the primitive communal, Asian, and ancient modes of production still existed among backward peoples. But they were not dominant in the world.

By the beginning of the 16th century, with the development of machine production and large-scale industry, feudal production relations began to slow down the development of large-scale industry due to the serfdom of the labor force. There was a need for labor force. It was then that the bourgeoisie (future capitalists) that was emerging in Western Europe led the struggle for the liberation of the labor force from feudal dependence, for the introduction of free wage labor. The capitalist mode of production finally became dominant in Western Europe by the second half of the 19th century. But along with it, elements of the primitive, Asian, feudal, and even slave-owning modes of production still existed and still exist in some places on the planet.

Now, with the collapse and disintegration of the USSR, we are clearly seeing how the process of globalization of the capitalist mode of production is taking place, its coverage of all mankind, the universalization of world productive forces, the formation of a universal world-historical, proletarian-international personality. This trend was noted by the classics in The German Ideology. It was also described by Marx in Capital. As predicted by Marx, the accumulation and concentration of capital led to the emergence of global economic crises that took on a chronic and systemic character. They are caused by the overproduction of capital, its drain into the financial sector and its transformation into fictitious soap bubbles. These crises, according to the classics, are the harbingers of the world communist revolution. They urgently demand the creation of an international communist party to meet the world communist revolution, which is being prepared by the international bourgeoisie. This is not a political, but a social revolution. In the course of this revolution, there must be a change of production relations from capitalist private property to communist ones for further development productive forces. The relations of capitalist private property must be replaced by relations of common property or common ownership. Property relations in Marxist theory will be the subject of the next lecture.