Socio-economic formation- in Marxism - a stage of social evolution, characterized by a certain stage in the development of the productive forces of society and the historical type of economic production relations corresponding to this stage, which depend on it and are determined by it. There are no formational stages in the development of productive forces that would not correspond to the types of production relations conditioned by them.

Socio-economic formations in Marx

Karl Marx did not postulate that the issue of socio-economic formations was finally resolved and singled out different formations in different works. In the preface to The Critique of Political Economy (1859), Marx named the "progressive epochs of the economic social formation", which were determined by the social modes of production, among which were named:

• Asiatic;
• Antique;
• Feudal;
• Capitalist.

In his later works, Marx considered three "modes of production": "Asiatic", "antique" and "Germanic", however, the "Germanic" mode of production did not fall into the officially recognized five-term scheme of periodization of history.

Five-membered scheme ("five-membered")

Although Marx did not formulate a complete theory of socio-economic formations, the generalization of his statements became the basis for Soviet historians(V. V. Struve and others), to conclude that he singled out five formations in accordance with the dominant production relations and forms of ownership:

• primitive communal;
• slaveholding;
• feudal;
• capitalist;
• communist.

This concept was formulated in the popular work of F. Engels "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" and after the canonization of I. V. Stalin's work "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism" (1938) began to reign supreme among Soviet historians.

Feudalism

In society, a class of feudal lords - landowners - and a class of peasants dependent on them, who are personally dependent, stand out. Production, mainly agricultural, is carried out by the labor of dependent peasants exploited by feudal lords. Feudal society is characterized by a class social structure. The main mechanism that encourages labor is serfdom, economic coercion.

Capitalism

Socialism

In the five - term formation scheme , socialism was considered as the first phase of the highest - communist - social formation .

This is the communist society that has just emerged from the bowels of capitalism, which in all respects bears the imprint of the old society and which Marx calls the “first” or lower phase of communist society.

The backward countries can pass to socialism bypassing capitalism in the course of the non-capitalist path of development.

In the development of socialism, a transitional period is singled out, socialism built in the main, developed socialism.

Marx and Engels did not assign socialism the place of a separate socio-economic formation. The terms "socialism" and "communism" themselves were synonymous and denoted a society following capitalism.

We are dealing not with a communist society which has developed on its own basis, but with one which is just emerging from capitalist society and which therefore in all respects, economic, moral and mental, still retains the birthmarks of the old society. from which it emerged.

Full communism

Full communism is "reverse appropriation, reconquest" by man of his objective essence, which opposes him in the form of capital, and "the beginning of the true history of mankind."

... after the subjugation of man to the division of labor disappears; when the opposition of mental and physical labor disappears along with it; when labor ceases to be only a means of life, and becomes itself the first need of life; when together with comprehensive development productive forces will grow and all sources of social wealth will flow in full flow - only then will it be possible to completely overcome the narrow horizon of bourgeois law, and society will be able to write on its banner: "To each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Communism

The communist formation in its development goes through a phase of socialism and a phase of complete communism.

Discussions about socio-economic formations in the USSR

Asian way of production

The existence of the Asian mode of production as a separate formation was not universally recognized and was a topic of discussion throughout the existence of historical materialism in the USSR. In the works of Marx and Engels, he is also not mentioned everywhere.

Among the early stages of class society, a number of scholars, relying on some of the statements of Marx and Engels, single out, in addition to the slave-owning and feudal modes of production, a special Asian mode of production and the formation corresponding to it. However, the question of the existence of such a mode of production has caused a discussion in the philosophical and historical literature and has not yet received an unambiguous solution.

G. E. Glezerman, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 30, p. 420

On the late stages the existence of a primitive society, the level of production made it possible to create a surplus product. Communities united into large formations with centralized control. Of these, a class of people gradually emerged, occupied exclusively with management. This class became isolated, accumulated privileges and material benefits in its hands, which led to the emergence of private property and property inequality. The transition to slavery became possible and productively more profitable. The administrative apparatus is becoming more and more complex, gradually transforming into the state.

Four-term scheme

The Soviet Marxist historian V.P. Ilyushechkin in 1986 proposed, based on the logic of Marx, to distinguish not five, but four formations (he attributed the feudal and slave-owning formations to one estate-class, as such, where manual labor corresponded to the consumer-value type of production relations). Ilyushechkin believed that within the framework of pre-capitalist political economy, one can only speak of a single pre-capitalist formation, which was characterized by a pre-capitalist mode of production.

Theory at the present stage

According to Kradin, the theory of socio-economic formations has been in a state of crisis since the 1990s: “By the mid-1990s. one can speak of the scientific death of the five-term scheme of formations. Even its main defenders in the last decades of the 20th century. acknowledged its failure. V. N. Nikiforov in October 1990, shortly before his death, at a conference on the features historical development East, publicly admitted that the four-stage concepts of Yu. M. Kobishchanov or V. P. Ilyushechkin more adequately reflect the course of the historical process "

The theoretical teaching of Karl Marx, who put forward and substantiated the formational concept of society, occupies a special place among sociological thought. One of the first in the history of sociology, K. Marx develops a very detailed idea of ​​society as a system.

This idea is embodied primarily in his concept socio-economic structure.

The term "formation" (from Latin formatio - formation) was originally used in geology (mainly) and in botany. It was introduced into science in the second half of the 18th century. by the German geologist G.K. The interaction and change of economic formations were considered by K. Marx in the application to pre-capitalist formations in a separate working material, which lay aside from the study of Western capitalism.

Socio-economic formation - a historical type of society, characterized by a certain state of the productive forces, production relations and the superstructural forms determined by the latter. A formation is a developing social and production organism that has special laws of origin, functioning, development and transformation into another, more complex social organism. Each of them has a special mode of production, its own type of production relations, a special nature of the social organization of labor, historically determined, stable forms of community of people and relations between them, specific forms of public administration, special forms of family organization and family relations, a special ideology and a set of spiritual values.

The concept of social formation by K. Marx is an abstract construction, which can also be called an ideal type. In this regard, M. Weber quite rightly considered Marxist categories, including the category of social formation, "mental constructions." He himself skillfully used this powerful cognitive tool. This is such a technique of theoretical thinking that allows you to create a capacious and generalized image of a phenomenon or group of phenomena at the conceptual level without resorting to statistics. K. Marx called such constructions "pure" type, M. Weber - ideal type. Their essence is in one thing - to single out the main, recurring in empirical reality, and then combine this main thing into a consistent logical model.

Socio-economic formation- a society that is at a certain stage of historical development. The formation is based on a well-known mode of production, which is the unity of the basis (economy) and the superstructure (politics, ideology, science, etc.). The history of mankind looks like a sequence of five formations following one after another: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist formations.

AT this definition the following structural and dynamic elements are fixed:

• 1. No single country, culture or society can constitute a social formation, but only the totality of many countries.
• 2. The type of formation is determined not by religion, art, ideology, and even not by the political regime, but by its foundation - the economy.
• 3. The superstructure is always secondary, and the basis is primary, therefore politics will always be only a continuation of the economic interests of the country (and within it - the economic interests of the ruling class).
• 4. All social formations, built in a consistent chain, express the progressive ascent of humanity from the lower stages of development to the highest.

According to the social statics of K. Marx, the basis of society is entirely economic. It represents the dialectical unity of productive forces and production relations. The superstructure includes ideology, culture, art, education, science, politics, religion, family.

Marxism proceeds from the assertion that the nature of the superstructure is determined by the nature of the basis. This means that economic relations largely determine the power that rises above them. superstructure, that is, the totality of political, moral, legal, artistic, philosophical, religious views society and the relations and institutions corresponding to these views. As the nature of the base changes, so too does the nature of the superstructure.

The basis has absolute autonomy and independence from the superstructure. The superstructure in relation to the basis has only relative autonomy. It follows from this that economics, and to some extent politics, possess true reality. That is, it is real - from the point of view of influencing the social formation - only in the second place. As far as ideology is concerned, it is already, as it were, third place real.

By productive forces, Marxism understood:

• 1. People engaged in the manufacture of goods and the provision of services with a certain qualification and ability to work.
• 2. Land, subsoil and minerals.
• 3. Buildings and premises where the production process is carried out.
• 4. Tools of labor and production from a hand hammer to high-precision machine tools.
• 5. Technology and equipment.
• 6. Final products and raw materials. All of them are divided into two categories - personal and material factors of production.

The productive forces form, expressed modern language, sociotechnical system of production, and the relations of production socio-economic. The productive forces are the external environment for production relations, the change of which leads either to their modification (partial change) or to complete destruction (replacement of old ones by new ones, which is always accompanied by a social revolution).

Production relations - relations between people that develop in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods under the influence of the nature and level of development of the productive forces. They occur between large groups people employed in social production. The relations of production that form the economic structure of society determine the behavior and actions of people, both peaceful coexistence and conflicts between classes, the emergence social movements and revolution.

In Capital, K. Marx proves that production relations are ultimately determined by the level and nature of the development of the productive forces.

A socio-economic formation is a set of countries on the planet that are currently at the same stage of historical development, have similar mechanisms, institutions and institutions that determine the basis and superstructure of society.

According to the formational theory of K. Marx, in each historical period, if you make an instant portrait of humanity, a variety of formations coexist on the planet - some in their classical form, others in their surviving form (transitional societies where the remnants of various formations have accumulated).

The entire history of society can be divided into stages, depending on how the production of goods is carried out. Marx called them modes of production. There are five historical modes of production (also called socio-economic formations).

The story starts with primitive formation, in which people worked together, there was no private property, exploitation, inequality and social classes. The second stage is slave formation, or method of production.

Replaced slavery feudalism- a method of production based on the exploitation of personally and land dependent direct producers by land owners. It originated at the end of the 5th century. as a result of the decomposition of the slave-owning, and in some countries (including among the Eastern Slavs) primitive communal system

The essence of the basic economic law of feudalism is the production of a surplus product in the form of feudal rent in the form of labor, food and cash rent. The main wealth and means of production is land, which is privately owned by the landowner and leased to the peasant for temporary use (lease). He pays rent to the feudal lord, in food or money, allowing him to live comfortably and in idle luxury.

The peasant is more free than the slave, but less free than the hired worker, who, along with the owner-entrepreneur, becomes the main figure in the following - capitalist- stage of development. The main mode of production is mining and manufacturing. Feudalism seriously undermined the basis of its economic well-being - the peasant population, a significant part of which was ruined and turned into proletarians, people without property and status. They filled the cities where at the same time the Workers enter into a contract with the employer, or an agreement that limits the exploitation to certain norms, harmonized with legal laws. The owner of the enterprise does not put money in the chest, and puts his capital into circulation. The size of the profit he receives is determined by the situation on the market, the art of management and the rationality of the organization of labor.

Completes the story communist formation, which brings people back to equality on a higher material basis. In a systematically organized communist society, there will be no private property, inequality, social classes and the state as a machine of repression.

The functioning and change of formations is subject to general laws that bind them into a single process of the progressive movement of mankind. At the same time, each formation has its own special laws of emergence and development. The unity of the historical process does not mean that every social organism goes through all formations. Humanity as a whole goes through them, “pulling itself up” to those countries and regions where the most progressive mode of production in a given historical era has won and superstructural forms corresponding to it have developed.

The transition from one formation to another, capable of creating higher production capacities, a more perfect system of economic, political and spiritual relations, is the content of historical progress.

The materialist theory of history of K. Marx is because the determining role in the development of society belongs not to the consciousness, but to the being of people. Being determines the consciousness, relationships of people, their behavior and views. Social production is the foundation of social life. It represents both the process and the result of the interaction of production forces (tools and people) and production relations. The totality of production relations that do not depend on the consciousness of people constitutes the economic structure of society. It's called the basis. Above the base rises a legal and political superstructure. This includes various forms of social consciousness, including religion and science. The base is primary and the superstructure is secondary.

Introduction

Today, the concepts of the historical process (formational, civilizational, modernization theories) have found their limits of applicability. The degree of awareness of the limitations of these concepts is different: most of all, the shortcomings of the formational theory are realized, as for the civilizational doctrine and modernization theories, then there are more illusions regarding their possibilities of explaining the historical process.

The insufficiency of these concepts for the study of social changes does not mean their absolute falsity, the point is only that the categorical apparatus of each of the concepts, the range of social phenomena it describes is not complete enough, at least in relation to the description of what is contained in alternative theories.

It is necessary to rethink the content of descriptions of social changes, as well as the concepts of general and unique, on the basis of which generalizations and differentiations are made, schemes of the historical process are built.

Theories of the historical process reflect a one-sided understanding of historical changes; there is a reduction in the diversity of their forms to some kind. The formational concept sees only progress in the historical process, moreover, total, believing that progressive development covers all areas social life, including a person.

The theory of socio-economic formations of K. Marx

One of the important shortcomings of orthodox historical materialism was that it did not identify and theoretically develop the basic meanings of the word "society". And this word in the scientific language has at least five such meanings. The first meaning is a specific separate society, which is a relatively independent unit of historical development. Society in this understanding, I will call a socio-historical (socio-historical) organism or, in short, a socior.

The second meaning is a spatially limited system of socio-historical organisms, or a sociological system. The third meaning is all the socio-historical organisms that have ever existed and still exist, taken together - human society as a whole. The fourth meaning is society in general, regardless of any specific forms of its real existence. The fifth meaning is a society of a certain type in general (a particular society or type of society), for example, a feudal society or an industrial society.

There are different classifications of socio-historical organisms (according to the form of government, the dominant confession, the socio-economic system, the dominant sphere of the economy, etc.). But the most general classification- the subdivision of sociohistorical organisms according to the method of their internal organization into two main types.

The first type is socio-historical organisms, which are unions of people organized on the basis of personal membership, primarily kinship. Each such socior is inseparable from its personnel and is capable of moving from one territory to another without losing its identity. Such societies I will call demosocial organisms (demosociors). They are characteristic of the pre-class era of human history. Examples are primitive communities and multi-communal organisms called tribes and chiefdoms.

The boundaries of organisms of the second type are the boundaries of the territory they occupy. Such formations are organized according to the territorial principle and are inseparable from the areas of the earth's surface they occupy. As a result, the personnel of each such organism acts in relation to this organism as an independent special phenomenon - its population. I will call such societies geosocial organisms (geosociors). They are characteristic of a class society. They are usually referred to as states or countries.

Since there was no concept of a socio-historical organism in historical materialism, neither the concept of a regional system of socio-historical organisms, nor the concept of human society as a whole as the totality of all existing and existing sociors was developed in it. The latter concept, although present in an implicit form (implicitly), was not clearly delimited from the concept of society in general.

The absence of the concept of a socio-historical organism in the categorical apparatus of the Marxist theory of history inevitably interfered with the understanding of the category of socio-economic formation. It was impossible to truly understand the category of socio-economic formation without comparing it with the concept of a socio-historical organism. Defining a formation as a society or as a stage in the development of society, our specialists in historical materialism did not reveal in any way the meaning that they put into the word "society", worse than that, they endlessly, themselves completely unaware of it, passed from one meaning of this word to another, which inevitably gave rise to incredible confusion.

Each specific socio-economic formation is a certain type of society, identified on the basis of the socio-economic structure. This means that a specific socio-economic formation is nothing other than that which is common to all socio-historical organisms that have a given socio-economic structure. The concept of a specific formation always fixes, on the one hand, the fundamental identity of all sociohistorical organisms based on the same system of production relations, and on the other hand, a significant difference between specific societies with different socio-economic structures. Thus, the ratio of a socio-historical organism belonging to one or another socio-economic formation and this formation itself is the ratio of the individual and the general.

The problem of the general and the particular is one of the critical issues philosophy and debates around it have been going on throughout the history of this field human knowledge. Since the Middle Ages, two main directions in solving this issue have been called nominalism and realism. According to the views of the nominalists, in the objective world there is only the separate. The general either does not exist at all, or it exists only in consciousness, is a mental human construction.

There is a grain of truth in each of these two views, but both are wrong. For scientists, the existence of laws, patterns, essence, and necessity in the objective world is undeniable. And all this is common. The general thus exists not only in consciousness, but also in the objective world, but only in a different way than the individual exists. And this otherness of the being of the general does not at all consist in the fact that it forms a special world opposed to the separate world. There is no special world in common. The general does not exist by itself, not independently, but only in the individual and through the individual. On the other hand, the individual does not exist without the general.

Thus, two different types of objective existence take place in the world: one type - independent existence, as the individual exists, and the second - existence only in the individual and through the individual, as the general exists.

Sometimes, however, it is said that the individual exists as such, while the general, while really existing, does not exist as such. In what follows, I will designate independent existence as self-existence, as self-existence, and existence in another and through another as other-existence, or as other-being.

Different formations are based on qualitatively different systems of socio-economic relations. This means that different formations develop in different ways, according to different laws. Therefore, from this point of view, the most important task of social science is to study the laws of functioning and development of each of the socio-economic formations, that is, to create a theory for each of them. In relation to capitalism, K. Marx tried to solve such a problem.

The only way that can lead to the creation of a theory of any formation is to identify that essential, common thing that is manifested in the development of all sociohistorical organisms of a given type. It is quite clear that it is impossible to reveal the general in phenomena without digressing from the differences between them. It is possible to reveal the internal objective necessity of any real process only by freeing it from that specific historical form in which it manifested itself, only by presenting this process in a "pure" form, in a logical form, i.e., in such a way that it can exist only in theoretical consciousness.

It is quite clear that a specific socio-economic formation in its pure form, that is, as a special socio-historical organism, can exist only in theory, but not in historical reality. In the latter, it exists in individual societies as their inner essence, their objective basis.

Each real concrete socio-economic formation is a type of society and thus that objective common thing that is inherent in all socio-historical organisms of a given type. Therefore, it may well be called a society, but by no means a real sociohistorical organism. It can act as a sociohistorical organism only in theory, but not in reality. Each specific socio-economic formation, being a certain type of society, is the same society of this type in general. The capitalist socio-economic formation is the capitalist type of society and, at the same time, capitalist society in general.

Each concrete formation has a certain relationship not only to sociohistorical organisms of a given type, but to society in general, that is, to that objective general that is inherent in all sociohistorical organisms, regardless of their type. In relation to sociohistorical organisms of this type, each specific formation acts as a general one. In relation to society in general, a particular formation acts as a general less high level, i.e. as special, as a specific variety of society in general, as a particular society.

The concept of a socio-economic formation in general, like the concept of society in general, reflects the general, but different from that which reflects the concept of society in general. The concept of society generally reflects what is common to all sociohistorical organisms, regardless of their type. The concept of a socio-economic formation in general reflects the common thing that is inherent in all specific socio-economic formations, regardless of their specific features, namely, that they are all types identified on the basis of socio-economic structure.

As a reaction to this kind of interpretation of socio-economic formations, a denial of their real existence arose. But it was due not only to the incredible confusion that existed in our literature on the question of formations. The matter was more complicated. As has already been pointed out, in theory socio-economic formations exist as ideal sociohistorical organisms. Not finding such formations in the historical reality, some of our historians, and after them some of the historians, came to the conclusion that formations do not really exist at all, that they are only logical, theoretical constructions.

They were unable to understand that socio-economic formations also exist in historical reality, but otherwise than in theory, not as ideal sociohistorical organisms of one type or another, but as an objective commonality in real sociohistorical organisms of one type or another. For them, existence was reduced only to self-existence. They, like all nominalists in general, did not take into account other beings, and socio-economic formations, as already indicated, have no self-existence. They do not self-exist, but exist differently.

In this regard, one cannot but say that the theory of formations can be accepted or rejected. But the socio-economic formations themselves cannot be ignored. Their existence, at least as certain types of society, is an undeniable fact.

• 1. The basis of the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations is a materialistic understanding of the history of the development of mankind as a whole, as a historically changing set various forms activities of people in the production of their lives.
• 2. The unity of the productive forces and production relations constitutes the historically determined mode of production of the material life of society.
• 3. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual process of life in general.
• 4. Under the material productive forces in Marxism, we mean the instruments of production or means of production, technologies and people using them. Basic productive force is a person, his physical and mental abilities, as well as his cultural and moral level.
• 5. The relations of production in Marxist theory denote the relations of individuals regarding both the reproduction of the human species in general and the actual production of means of production and consumer goods, their distribution, exchange and consumption.
• 6. The totality of production relations, as a way of producing the material life of society, constitutes the economic structure of society.
• 7. Under the socio-economic formation in Marxism is understood the historical period of the development of mankind, characterized by a certain mode of production.
• 8. According to Marxist theory, humanity as a whole is moving progressively from less developed socio-economic formations to more developed ones. Such is the dialectical logic that Marx extended to the history of human development.
• 9. In K. Marx's theory of socio-economic formations, each formation acts as a society of a certain type in general, and thus as a pure, ideal socio-historical organism of a given type. Primitive society in general, Asiatic society in general, pure ancient society, etc. figure in this theory. social formations appears in it as the transformation of an ideal socio-historical organism of one type into a pure socio-historical organism of another, higher type: ancient society in general into feudal society in general, pure feudal society into pure capitalist, capitalist into communist.
• 10. The entire history of the development of mankind in Marxism was presented as a dialectical, progressive movement of mankind from the primitive communist formation to the Asian and ancient (slave-owning) formations, and from them to the feudal, and then to the bourgeois (capitalist) socio-economic formation.

Socio-historical practice has confirmed the correctness of these Marxist conclusions. And if there are disputes about the Asian and ancient (slave-owning) modes of production and their transition to feudalism in science, then the reality of the existence of the historical period of feudalism, and then its evolutionary-revolutionary development into capitalism, no one doubts.

11. Marxism revealed the economic reasons for the change in socio-economic formations. Their essence lies in the fact that, at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - which is only a legal expression of this - with the property relations within which they have so far developed. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into their fetters. Then comes the era of social revolution. With a change in the economic basis, a revolution takes place more or less quickly in the entire vast superstructure.

This happens because the productive forces of society develop according to their own internal laws. In their movement they always outstrip the relations of production that develop within the relations of property.

Prerequisites for the development of the theory of socio-economic formation

In the middle of the XIX century. Marxism arose integral part which was the philosophy of history - historical materialism. Historical materialism is the Marxist sociological theory - the science of the general and specific laws of the functioning and development of society.

To K. Marx (1818-1883) idealistic positions dominated in his views on society. For the first time, he consistently applied the materialistic principle to explain social processes. The main thing in his teaching was the recognition of social being as primary, and social consciousness as secondary, derivative.

Social being is a set of material social processes that do not depend on the will and consciousness of an individual or even society as a whole.

The logic here is this. The main problem for society is the production of the means of life (food, housing, etc.). This production is always carried out with the help of tools. Certain objects of labor are also involved.

At each specific stage of history, the productive forces have a certain level of development. And they determine (determine) certain production relations.

This means that the relations between people in the course of the production of means of subsistence are not chosen arbitrarily, but depend on the nature of the productive forces.

In particular, for thousands of years it is enough low level their development, the technical level of tools, which allowed their individual use, led to the dominance of private property (in different forms).

The concept of the theory, its supporters

In the 19th century productive forces acquired a qualitatively different character. The technological revolution caused the massive use of machines. Their use was possible only by joint, collective efforts. Production acquired a directly social character. As a result, ownership also had to be made common, to resolve the contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation.

Remark 1

According to Marx, politics, ideology and other forms of social consciousness (superstructure) are derivative. They reflect industrial relations.

A society that is at a certain level of historical development, with a peculiar character, is called a socio-economic formation. This is a central category in the sociology of Marxism.

Remark 2

Society has gone through several formations: the original, slave, feudal, bourgeois.

The latter creates the prerequisites (material, social, spiritual) for the transition to a communist formation. Since the core of the formation is the mode of production as a dialectical unity of productive forces and production relations, the stages of human history in Marxism are often called not a formation, but a mode of production.

Marxism considers the development of society as a natural-historical process of replacing one mode of production with another, higher one. The founder of Marxism had to focus on the material factors in the development of history, since idealism reigned around him. This made it possible to accuse Marxism of "economic determinism", which ignores the subjective factor of history.

AT last years life F. Engels tried to correct this shortcoming. VI Lenin attached particular importance to the role of the subjective factor. Marxism considers the class struggle to be the main driving force in history.

One socio-economic formation is replaced by another in the process of social revolutions. The conflict between the productive forces and production relations is manifested in the clash of certain social groups, antagonistic classes, which are the actors of revolutions.

The classes themselves are formed on the basis of the relationship to the means of production.

So, the theory of socio-economic formations is based on the recognition of the action in the natural-historical process of objective tendencies formulated in such laws:

• Correspondence of production relations to the nature and level of development of the productive forces;
• The primacy of the basis and the secondary nature of the superstructure;
• class struggle and social revolutions;
• Natural and historical development of mankind through the change of socio-economic formations.

findings

After the victory of the proletariat, public ownership puts everyone in the same position with respect to the means of production, and therefore leads to the disappearance of the class division of society and the destruction of antagonism.

Remark 3

The biggest shortcoming in the theory of socio-economic formations and the sociological concept of K. Marx is that he refused to recognize the right to a historical future for all classes and strata of society, except for the proletariat.

Despite the shortcomings and the criticism that Marxism has been subjected to for 150 years, it has more influenced the development of the social thought of mankind.

In the theory of socio-economic formations, K. Marx and F. Engels singled out material relations from all the apparent chaos of social relations, and within them, first of all, economic, production relations as primary. In this regard, two extremely important facts emerged.

Firstly, it turned out that in each specific society, production relations not only form a more or less integral system, but are also the basis, the foundation of other social relations and the social organism as a whole.

Secondly, it turned out that economic relations in the history of mankind existed in several basic types: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist. Therefore, some specific societies, despite the obvious differences between the council (for example, Athenian, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian), belong to the same stage of historical development (slave-owning), if they have the same type of economic basis as their economic basis. relations.

As a result, the entire set of social systems observed in history was reduced to several main types, called socio-economic formations (SEF). At the foundation of each OEF are certain productive forces - tools and objects of labor, plus the people who put them into action. In our philosophical literature for decades, the foundation of the GEF was understood as the economic mode of production as a whole. Thus, there was a mixing of the foundation with the basis. The interests of scientific analysis require the separation of these concepts. Economic relations are the basis of the OEF, i.e. e. relations between people that develop in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods. In the conditions of a class society, relations between classes become the essence and core of economic relations. What are the main elements that make it possible to present the socio-economic formation as an integral, living organism?

First, economic relations to a large extent determine the power that rises above them. superstructure - a set of political, moral, legal, artistic, philosophical, religious views of society and the relations and institutions corresponding to these views . It is in relation to the superstructure, as well as to other non-economic elements of the formation, that economic relations act as the economic basis of society.

Secondly, the composition of the formation includes ethnic and socio-ethnic forms of the community of people, determined in their emergence, evolution and disappearance by both sides of the mode of production: both the nature of economic relations and the stage of development of the productive forces.

Thirdly, the composition of the formation includes the type and form of the family, which are also predetermined at each historical stage by both sides of the mode of production.

As a result, it can be said that socio-economic formation - this is a society at a certain stage of historical development, characterized by a specific economic basis and the corresponding political and spiritual superstructures, historical forms of community of people, type and form of the family. It is not uncommon for opponents of the formational paradigm to claim that the concept of the EEF is simply a "thinking scheme"; if not fiction. The basis for such an accusation is the fact that in a "pure" form in no country the CEF is found: there are always such public relations and institutions that belong to other formations. And if so, the conclusion is made, then the very concept of GEF loses its meaning. In this case, to explain the stages of formation and development of societies, they resort to civilizational (A. Toynbee) and cultural (O. Spengler, P. Sorokin) approaches.

Of course, there are no absolutely “pure” formations, because the unity general concept and a particular phenomenon is always contradictory. This is the case in natural science as well. Any particular society is always in the process of development, and therefore, along with what determines the appearance of the dominant formation, there are remnants of old or embryos of new formations in it. It is also necessary to take into account the discrepancy between the economic, socio-political and cultural levels of development of individual countries and regions, which also causes intraformational differences and deviations from the standard. However, the doctrine of the GEF provides the key to understanding the unity and diversity of human history.

Unity historical process is expressed primarily in the successive change of socio-economic formations with each other. This unity is also manifested in the fact that all social organisms based on this mode of production, with objective necessity, reproduce all other typical features of the corresponding GEF. But since a divergence is always inevitable between the logical, theoretical, ideal, on the one hand, and the concrete historical, on the other, the development of individual countries and peoples also differs significantly. diversity. The main manifestations of the diversity of socio-historical development:

Local features and even varieties of formational development of individual countries and entire regions are revealed. One can recall, for example, numerous discussions on the problem of "West - East".

Specific transitional epochs from one OEF to another have their own specifics. For example, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, which was revolutionary in its essence, in some countries was carried out in a revolutionary form, while in others (Russia, the Prussian part of Germany, Japan) it took place in an evolutionary form.

Not every nation necessarily passes through all socio-economic formations. East Slavs, Arabs, Germanic tribes at one time passed the slave-owning formation; Today, many peoples of Asia and Africa are trying to "step over" a series of formations, or at least two of them (slave ownership, feudalism). Such a surge of historical backwardness becomes possible thanks to the critical assimilation of the experience of more advanced peoples. However, this “external” can only be superimposed on an “internal” that is suitably prepared for this implementation. Otherwise, conflicts between traditional culture and innovations are inevitable.