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

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

The term "formation" (from Latin formatio - formation) was originally used in geology (mainly) and botany. It was introduced into science in the second half of the 18th century. by the German geologist G. K. Fücksel and then, at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, it was widely used by his compatriot, geologist A. G. Berner. 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.

A socio-economic formation is a historical type of society, characterized by a certain state of productive forces, production relations and the superstructural forms determined by the latter. A formation is a developing social production organism that has special laws of emergence, functioning, development and transformation into another, more complex social organism. Each of them has a special method 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 relationships between them, specific forms of social management, 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, as “mental constructions.” He himself skillfully used this powerful cognitive tool. This is a method 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 a “pure” type, M. Weber - an ideal type. Their essence is one thing - to highlight the main, repeating thing in empirical reality, and then combine this main thing into a consistent logical model.

Socio-economic formation- a society at a certain stage of historical development. The formation is based on a well-known method of production, which represents the unity of the base (economics) and the superstructure (politics, ideology, science, etc.). The history of mankind looks like a sequence of five formations following each other: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist formations.

This definition captures the following structural and dynamic elements:

• 1. No single country, culture or society can constitute a social formation, but only a collection of many countries.
• 2. The type of formation is determined not by religion, art, ideology, or even the political regime, but by its foundation - the economy.
• 3. The superstructure is always secondary, and the base 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, arranged in a sequential chain, express the progressive ascent of humanity from lower stages of development to higher ones.

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 character of the superstructure is determined by the character of the base. This means that economic relations largely determine the superstructure, that is, the totality of political, moral, legal, artistic, philosophical, religious views of society and the relationships and institutions corresponding to these views. As the nature of the base changes, the nature of the superstructure also changes.

The basis has absolute autonomy and independence from the superstructure. The superstructure in relation to the base has only relative autonomy. It follows that true reality is possessed primarily by economics, and partly by politics. That is, it is real - from the point of view of influence on the social formation - only secondarily. As for ideology, it is real, as it were, in the third place.

By productive forces Marxism understood:

• 1. People engaged in the production of goods and the provision of services who have certain qualifications 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 machines.
• 5. Technology and equipment.
• 6. Final products and raw materials. All of them are divided into two categories - personal and material factors of production.

Productive forces form, in modern language, sociotechnical production system, and production relations - socio-economic. 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 with new ones, which is always accompanied by a social revolution).

Production relations are 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 arise between large groups of people engaged 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 of social movements and revolutions.

In Capital, K. Marx proves that relations of production 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 formation theory of K. Marx, in each historical period, if you take a snapshot of humanity, a variety of formations coexist on the planet - some in their classical form, others in their survival form (transitional societies, where the remains of a variety of formations are layered).

The entire history of society can be divided into stages depending on how goods are produced. Marx called them modes of production. There are five historical methods of production (they are also called socio-economic formations).

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

Slavery was replaced by feudalism- a method of production based on the exploitation of personally and land-dependent direct producers by land owners. It arose at the end of the 5th century. as a result of the decomposition of the slaveholding, and in some countries (including the Eastern Slavs) the primitive communal system

The essence of the basic economic law of feudalism is the production of surplus product in the form of feudal rent in the form of labor, food and money. The main wealth and means of production is land, which is privately owned by the landowner and leased to the peasant for temporary use (rent). He pays the feudal lord rent, 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 becomes, along with the owner-entrepreneur, the main figure in the following - capitalist- stage of development. The main mode of production is the mining and manufacturing industries. Feudalism seriously undermined the basis of its economic well-being - the peasant population, a significant part of which it ruined and turned into proletarians, people without property and status. They filled the cities where workers enter into a contract with the employer, or an agreement that limits exploitation to certain standards consistent with legal laws. The owner of the enterprise does not put money in a chest, and puts his capital into circulation. The amount of profit he receives is determined by the market situation, the art of management and the rationality of labor organization.

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 suppression.

The functioning and change of formations is subject to general laws that link them into a single process of forward movement of humanity. At the same time, each formation has its own special laws of origin 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 up” to those countries and regions where the most progressive mode of production in a given historical era has won and the 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, constitutes the content of historical progress.

K. Marx's theory of history is materialistic because the decisive role in the development of society belongs not to consciousness, but to the existence of people. Being determines consciousness, relationships between people, their behavior and views. The foundation of social existence is social production. 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. A legal and political superstructure rises above the base. This includes various forms of social consciousness, including religion and science. The basis is primary, and the superstructure is secondary.

One of the ways to study society is the formational path.

Formation is a word of Latin origin, meaning “formation, form.” What is a formation? What types of formations are there? 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. This all adds up basis, that is, the basis of society. Towers over him superstructure.

Let us take a closer look at the concepts of “base” and “superstructure” put forward by K. Marx.

Basis – these are 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 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 is 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: the means of production, tools were in the hands of slave owners. They also owned slaves whose labor was exploited. The superstructure expressed the interests of 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 quitrents for it or worked corvee labor. Religion played a huge role in the superstructure, protecting the interests of those in power and at the same time uniting feudal lords and peasants into 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 of ownership of the means of production by selling their labor power, working in factories. Personally, the proletariat is free. The superstructure is complex: all members of society participate in the political struggle and 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 resolve it, and then the next formation would be established.
• Communist formation: characterized by a social form of ownership of the means of production. All members of society participate in the creation of goods and their distribution, and all the needs of society are fully satisfied. Today we understand that communism is a utopia. However, they believed in him for a long time, even N.S. Khrushchev. hoped that by 1980 communism would be built in the USSR.

Material prepared by: Melnikova Vera Aleksandrovna

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 and production relations as primary ones. In this regard, two extremely important circumstances became clear.

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

As a result, the entire multitude of social systems observed in history was reduced to several main types, called socio-economic formations (SEF). At the foundation of each OEF lie 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 EEF was understood as the economic mode of production as a whole. Thus, the foundation was mixed with the base. The interests of scientific analysis require the separation of these concepts. The basis of the EEF is economic relations, i.e. e. relations between people that develop in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods. In a class society, the essence and core of economic relations become relations between classes. What are the main elements that make it possible to imagine a socio-economic formation as an integral, living organism?

Firstly, economic relations largely determine the superstructure - the totality of political, moral, legal, artistic, philosophical, religious views of society and the relationships 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 formation includes ethnic and socio-ethnic forms of community of people, determined in their emergence, evolution and disappearance by both sides of the mode of production: both by the nature of economic relations and the stage of development of 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, we can say that socio-economic formation - This is a society at a certain stage of historical development, characterized by a specific economic basis and corresponding political and spiritual superstructures, historical forms of community of people, type and form of family. Opponents of the formational paradigm often claim that the concept of OEF is simply a “mental scheme”; if not fiction. The basis for such an accusation is the fact that the OEF is not found in its “pure” form in any country: there are always social connections and institutions that belong to other formations. And if so, the conclusion is drawn, 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 of a general concept and a specific phenomenon is always contradictory. This is how things are in natural science. Any specific 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 intra-organizational differences and deviations from the standard. However, the doctrine of OEF provides the key to understanding the unity and diversity of human history.

Unity the historical process is expressed primarily in the consistent replacement of socio-economic formations with each other. This unity is also manifested in the fact that all social organisms that have this method of production as their basis, with objective necessity, reproduce all other typical features of the corresponding OEF. But since there is always an inevitable discrepancy 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 variations in the formational development of individual countries and entire regions are revealed. We can recall, for example, numerous discussions on the “West - East” problem.

Specific transition eras from one OEF to another also have their own specificity. Let's say, the essentially revolutionary transition from feudalism to capitalism 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. The Eastern Slavs, Arabs, and Germanic tribes at one time bypassed the slave-owning formation; Many peoples of Asia and Africa are trying today to “step over” a series of formations, or at least two of them (slavery, feudalism). Such a catch-up of historical lag becomes possible thanks to the critical assimilation of the experience of more advanced peoples. However, this “external” can only be superimposed on the “internal” that is appropriately prepared for this implementation. Otherwise, conflicts between traditional culture and innovation are inevitable.

The theory of socio-economic formations is the cornerstone of the materialist understanding of history. As secondary basic relations in this theory, material relations are used, and within them, first of all, economic and production ones. All the diversity of societies, despite the obvious differences between them, belong to the same stage of historical development if they have the same type of production relations as their economic basis. As a result, all the diversity and multitude of social systems in history were reduced to several basic types, these types were called “socio-economic formations.” Marx in “Capital” analyzed the laws of formation and development of the capitalist formation, showed its historically coming nature, the inevitability of a new formation - communist. The term “formation” was taken from geology; in geology, “formation” means the stratification of geological deposits of a certain period. In Marx, the terms “formation”, “socio-economic formation”, “economic formation”, “social formation” are used in an identical sense. Lenin characterized the formation as a single, integral social organism. A formation is not an aggregate of individuals, not a mechanical collection of disparate social phenomena, it is an integral social system, each component of which should not be considered in isolation, but in connection with other social phenomena, with the entire society as a whole.

At the foundation of each formation lie certain productive forces (i.e. objects of labor, means of production and labor), their nature and level. As for the basis of the formation, these are relations of production; these are the relationships that develop between people in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods. In a class society, economic relations between classes become the essence and core of production relations. The entire building of the formation grows on this basis.

The following elements of the formation as an integral living organism can be distinguished:

The relations of production determine the superstructure that rises above them. The superstructure is the totality of political, legal, moral, artistic, philosophical, religious views of society and the corresponding relations and institutions. In relation to the superstructure, production relations act as an economic basis; the main law of formational development is the law of interaction between the base and the superstructure. This law determines the role of the entire system of economic relations, the main influence of ownership of the means of production in relation to political and legal ideas, institutions, social relations (ideological, moral, religious, spiritual). There is a total interdependence between the base and the superstructure: the base is always primary, the superstructure is secondary, but in turn it affects the base, it develops relatively independently. According to Marx, the influence of the base on the superstructure is not fatal, not mechanistic, and not unambiguous under different conditions. The superstructure encourages the base to develop it.

The composition of the formation includes ethnic forms of community of people (clan, tribe, nationality, nation). These forms are determined by the method of production, the nature of production relations and the stage of development of the productive forces.

And finally, this is the type and form of family.

They are also predetermined at every stage by both sides of the mode of production.

An important question is the question of patterns, general trends in the development of a specific historical society. Formation theorists believe:

• 1. That formations develop independently.
• 2. There is continuity in their development, continuity based on the technical and technological basis and property relations.
• 3. The pattern is the completeness of the development of the formation. Marx believed that not one formation dies before all the productive forces for which it provides enough scope are destroyed.
• 4. The movement and development of formations is carried out stepwise from a less perfect state to a more perfect one.
• 5. Countries of a high formation level play a leading role in development; they influence less developed ones.

Usually the following types of socio-economic formations are distinguished: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist (includes two phases - socialism and communism).

To characterize and compare different types of socio-economic formations, we will analyze them from the point of view of types of production relations. Dovgel E.S. distinguishes two fundamentally different types:

• 1) those in which people are forced to work by force or economically, while the results of labor are alienated from them;
• 2) those in which people work of their own free will, interestedly and reasonably participate in the distribution of the results of labor.

The distribution of the social product under slaveholding, feudal and capitalist relations is carried out according to the first type, under socialist and communist relations - according to the second type. (In primitive communal social relations, distribution is carried out unsystematically and it is difficult to single out any type). At the same time, Dovgel E.S. believes that both “capitalists” and “communists” have to admit: capitalism in economically developed countries today is just traditional words and “tablets in the brains”, as a tribute to an irrevocably past History, in essence, social-production relations of high levels of development (socialist and communist) are already very common in countries with the highest level of efficiency in production and people’s lives (USA, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Canada, France, Japan, etc.). In the case of the USSR, the definition of a country as socialist was applied unreasonably. Dovgel E.S. Theory of socio-economic formations and convergence of ideologies in economics. “Organization and Management”, international scientific and practical journal, 2002, No. 3, p. 145. The author of this work agrees with this position.

Among the main disadvantages of the formational approach are the underestimation of the ability of capitalist society to change independently, the underestimation of the “developability” of the capitalist system, this is Marx’s underestimation of the uniqueness of capitalism in a number of socio-economic formations. Marx creates a theory of formations, considering them as stages of social development, and in the preface “To the Critique of Political Economy” he writes “The prehistory of human society ends with the bourgeois economic formation.” Marx established an objective interdependence between the level of development and the state of society, the change in the types of its economic argumentation, he showed world history as a dialectical change of social structures, he sort of streamlined the course of world history. This was a discovery in the history of human civilization. The transition from one formation to another took place through revolution; the disadvantage of the Marxist scheme is the idea of ​​the same type of historical destinies of capitalism and pre-capitalist formations. Both Marx and Engels, fully aware and repeatedly revealing the deepest qualitative differences between capitalism and feudalism, with amazing consistency, emphasize the uniformity, uniformity of the capitalist and feudal formations, their subordination to the same general historical law. They pointed to contradictions of the same type between productive forces and production relations, here and there they recorded the inability to cope with them, here and there they recorded death as a form of society’s transition to another, higher stage of development. Marx’s change of formations resembles the change of human generations; more than one generation is not given the opportunity to live two life spans, so formations come, flourish, and die. This dialectic does not concern communism; it belongs to a different historical era. Marx and Engels did not allow the idea that capitalism could discover fundamentally new ways of resolving its contradictions, could choose a completely new form of historical movement.

None of the named main theoretical points underlying the theory of formations is now indisputable. The theory of socio-economic formations is not only based on the theoretical conclusions of the mid-19th century, but because of this cannot explain many of the contradictions that have arisen: the existence, along with zones of progressive (ascending) development, of zones of backwardness, stagnation and dead ends; the transformation of the state in one form or another into an important factor in social relations of production; modification and modification of classes; the emergence of a new hierarchy of values ​​with the priority of universal values ​​over class ones.

In conclusion of the analysis of the theory of socio-economic formations, it should be noted: Marx did not claim that his theory would be made global, to which the entire development of society on the entire planet is subject. The “globalization” of his views occurred later, thanks to the interpreters of Marxism.

The shortcomings identified in the formational approach are taken into account to some extent by the civilizational approach. It was developed in the works of N. Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, and later A. Toynbee. They put forward the idea of ​​a civilizational structure of social life. According to their ideas, the basis of social life is made up of “cultural-historical types” (Danilevsky) or “civilizations” (Spengler, Toynbee), more or less isolated from each other, going through a number of successive stages in their development: origin, flourishing, aging, decline.

All these concepts are characterized by such features as: rejection of the Eurocentric, unilinear scheme of social progress; conclusion about the existence of many cultures and civilizations, which are characterized by locality and different quality; a statement about the equal importance of all cultures in the historical process. The civilizational approach helps to see history without discarding certain options as not meeting the criteria of any one culture. But the civilizational approach to understanding the historical process is not without some shortcomings. In particular, it does not take into account the connection between different civilizations and does not explain the phenomenon of repetition.

Theory of socio-economic formation

K. Marx presented world history as a natural-historical, natural process of changing socio-economic formations. Using the economic type of industrial relations as the main criterion of progress (primarily the form of ownership of the means of production), Marx identifies five main economic formations in history: primitive communal, slave, feudal, bourgeois and communist.

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 formations occurs. Among the early stages of class society, some scientists, in addition to the slave and feudal modes of production, identify a special Asian mode of production and the formation corresponding to it. This question remains controversial and open in social science even now.

“Bourgeois relations of production,” wrote K. Marx, “are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production... The prehistory of human society ends with the bourgeois social formation.” It is naturally replaced, as K. Marx and F. Engels foresaw, by a communist formation, opening up truly human history.

A socio-economic formation is a historical type of society, an integral social system that develops and functions on the basis of its characteristic method of material wealth. Of the two main elements of the production method ( productive forces and industrial relations) in Marxism, production relations are considered to be leading; they determine the type of production method and, accordingly, the type of formation. The totality of the prevailing economic relations of production is Basis society. Above the base rises the political, legal superstructure . These two elements give an idea of ​​the systemic nature of social relations; serve as a methodological basis in the study of the structure of the formation ( see: diagram 37).

The consistent change of socio-economic formations is driven by the contradiction between new, developed productive forces and outdated production relations, which at a certain stage turn from forms of development into fetters of productive forces. Based on the analysis of this contradiction, Marx formulated two main patterns of change in formations.

1. Not a single socio-economic formation dies before all the productive forces for which it provides sufficient scope have developed, and new higher production relations never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the bosom of the old society.

2. The transition from one formation to another is carried out through a social revolution, which resolves the contradiction in the mode of production ( between productive forces and production relations) and as a result of this the entire system of social relations changes.

The theory of socio-economic formation is a method of comprehending world history in its unity and diversity. Consistent change of formations forms the main line of progress of humanity, forming its unity. At the same time, the development of individual countries and peoples is characterized by significant diversity, which manifests itself:

· - in the fact that not every specific society goes through all the stages ( for example, the Slavic peoples passed the stage of slavery);

· - in the existence of regional characteristics, cultural and historical specificity of the manifestation of general patterns;

· - the presence of various transitional forms from one formation to another; During the transition period in society, as a rule, various socio-economic structures coexist, representing both the remnants of the old and the embryos of a new formation.

Analyzing the new historical process, K. Marx also identified three main stages ( so-called trinomial):

The theory of socio-economic formation is the methodological basis of modern historical science ( on its basis, a global periodization of the historical process is made) and social studies in general.