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

In the middle of the 19th century. Marxism arose, an integral part of which was the philosophy of history - historical materialism. Historical materialism is Marxist sociological theory - the science of the general and specific laws of the functioning and development of society.

By K. Marx (1818-1883), his views on society were dominated by idealistic positions. He was the first to consistently apply the materialist principle to explain social processes. The main thing in his teaching was the recognition of social existence as primary, and social consciousness as secondary, derivative.

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

The logic here is this. The main problem for society is the production of 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, productive forces have a certain level of development. And they determine (determine) certain production relations.

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

In particular, over thousands of years, the rather low level of their development, the technical level of tools, which allowed their individual use, determined the dominance of private property (in various forms).

The concept of the theory, its supporters

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

Note 1

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

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

Note 2

Society went through several formations: initial, slaveholding, feudal, bourgeois.

The latter creates the prerequisites (material, social, spiritual) for the transition to a communist formation. Since the core of 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 views the development of society as a natural-historical process of replacing one method of production with another, higher one. The founder of Marxism had to focus on the material factors of 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.

In the last years of his life, F. Engels tried to correct this shortcoming. V.I. 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 productive forces and production relations manifests itself in the clash of certain social groups, antagonist classes, which are the protagonists of revolutions.

The classes themselves are formed based on their 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 the following 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-historical development of humanity through the change of socio-economic formations.

conclusions

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

Note 3

The biggest drawback 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 to all classes and strata of society except the proletariat.

Despite the shortcomings and the criticism that Marxism has been subjected to for 150 years, it has had a greater influence on the development of social thought of mankind.

The concept of socio-economic formation(economic society) can be formulated on the basis of studying specific types of such a formation: ancient and capitalist. Marx, Weber (the role of Protestant ethics in the development of capitalism) and other scientists played a major role in understanding these.

The socio-economic formation includes: 1) demosocial community of market-mass consumption ( original system); 2) a dynamically developing market economy, economic exploitation, etc. ( basic system); 3) democratic rule of law, political parties, church, art, free media, etc. ( auxiliary system). The socio-economic formation is characterized by purposeful and rational activity, the prevalence of economic interests, and a focus on profit.

The concept of private property and Roman law distinguish Western (market) societies from Eastern (planned) societies, which do not have the institution of private property, private law, or democracy. A democratic (market) state expresses the interests primarily of the market classes. Its foundation is formed by free citizens who have equal political, military and other rights and responsibilities and control power through elections and municipal self-government.

Democratic law acts as a legal form of private property and market relations. Without support from private law and power, the market basis cannot function. The Protestant Church, unlike the Orthodox Church, becomes the mental basis of the capitalist mode of production. This was shown by M. Weber in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Bourgeois art comprehends and imagines bourgeois existence in its works.

The private life of citizens of an economic society is organized into a civil community that opposes the socio-economic formation as an institutional system organized on a market basis. This community is partly included in the auxiliary, basic and demosocial subsystems of economic society, representing in this sense a hierarchical formation. The concept of civil society (community) appeared in the 17th century in the works of Hobbes and Locke, and was developed in the works of Rousseau, Montesquieu, Vico, Kant, Hegel and other thinkers. It got the name civil Unlike class society subjects under feudalism. Marx considered civil society together with bourgeois state, as part of the superstructure, and the revolutionary proletariat considered both bourgeois civil society and the liberal state to be the gravedigger. Instead, communist self-government should appear.

Thus, the concept of socio-economic formation is a synthesis of Spencer's industrial society, Marx's socio-economic formation and Parsons' social system. It is more adequate to the laws of development of living nature, based on competition, than political, based on monopoly. In social competition, the victory is won by a free, intellectual, enterprising, organized, self-developing community, for which the dialectical negation of traditionality for the sake of modernity, and modernity for the sake of post-modernity, is organic.

Types of socio-economic formations

The socio-economic formation is known in the form of (1) ancient, agrarian-market (Ancient Greece and Rome) and (2) capitalist (industrial-market). The second social formation arose from the remnants of the first in feudal Europe.

The ancient formation (1) arose later than the Asian one, around the 8th century BC. e.; (2) from some primitive societies living in favorable geographical conditions; (3) influenced by Asian societies; (4) as well as the technical revolution, the invention of iron tools and war. New tools became the reason for the transition of the primitive communal formation into the ancient one only where there were favorable geographical, demographic and subjective (mental, intellectual) conditions. Such conditions developed in ancient Greece, and then in Rome.

As a result of these processes, arose ancient community free private landowner families, significantly different from the Asian one. Ancient city-states appeared - states in which the veche assembly and elected power constituted the two poles of the ancient democratic state. A sign of the emergence of such societies can be considered the appearance of coins at the turn of the 8th-7th centuries BC. e. Ancient societies were surrounded by many primitive communal and Asian societies, with which they had complex relationships.

In the Greek policies there was an increase in population, the withdrawal of excess population to the colonies, and the development of trade, which transformed the family economy into a commodity-money economy. Trade quickly became the leading sector of the Greek economy. The social class of private producers and traders became the leading one; his interests began to determine the development of ancient policies. There was a decline in the ancient aristocracy, based on the clan system. The excess population was not only sent to the colonies, but also recruited into the standing army (as, for example, Philip, the father of Alexander the Great). The army became the leading instrument of “production” - the robbery of slaves, money and goods. The primitive communal system of Ancient Greece turned into an ancient (economic) formation.

The original the system of the ancient system was made up of families of free Greek or Italian community members who could feed themselves in favorable geographical conditions (sea, climate, land). They satisfied their needs through their own farming and commodity exchange with other families and communities. The ancient demosocial community consisted of slave owners, free community members and slaves.

Basic The system of the ancient formation consisted of a privately owned economy, the unity of productive forces (land, tools, livestock, slaves, free community members) and market (commodity) relations. In Asian formations, the market group encountered resistance from other social and institutional groups when it became rich because it encroached on the power hierarchy. In European societies, due to a random combination of circumstances, the trade and craft class, and then the bourgeoisie, imposed their own type of purposeful, rational market activity as the basis for the entire society. Already in the 16th century, European society became capitalist in type of economy.

Auxiliary the system of ancient society consisted of: a democratic state (ruling elite, branches of government, bureaucracy, law, etc.), political parties, community self-government; religion (priests), which affirmed the divine origin of ancient society; ancient art (songs, dances, painting, music, literature, architecture, etc.), which substantiated and elevated ancient civilization.

Ancient society was civil, representing a set of demosocial, economic, political and religious amateur organizations of citizens in all systems of the social system. They had freedom of speech, access to information, the right of free exit and entry and other civil rights. Civil society is evidence of individual liberation, something the traditional East is not familiar with. It opened up additional opportunities for unleashing the energy, initiative, and entrepreneurship of individuals, which significantly affected the quality of the demographic sphere of society: it was formed by the economic classes of the rich, wealthy, and poor. The struggle between them became the source of the development of this society.

The dialectics of the initial, basic and auxiliary systems of the ancient formation determined its development. The increase in the production of material goods led to an increase in the number of people. The development of the market basis affected the growth of wealth and its distribution between social classes. Political, legal, religious, artistic spheres of the socio-economic formation ensured the maintenance of order, legal regulation of the activities of owners and citizens, and ideologically justified the commodity economy. Due to its independence, it influenced the basis of commodity society, inhibiting or accelerating its development. The Reformation in Europe, for example, created new religious and moral motives for work and the ethics of Protestantism, from which modern capitalism grew.

In a feudal (mixed) society, the foundations of a liberal-capitalist system gradually emerge from the remnants of the ancient one. A liberal-capitalist worldview and the spirit of the bourgeoisie appear: rationality, professional duty, the desire for wealth and other elements of Protestant ethics. Max Weber criticized the economic materialism of Marx, who considered the consciousness of the bourgeois superstructure above the spontaneously formed market-economic basis. According to Weber, first appear single bourgeois adventurers and capitalist farms influencing other entrepreneurs. Then they become massive in the economic system and form capitalists from non-capitalists. Simultaneously An individualistic Protestant civilization emerges in the form of its individual representatives, institutions, and way of life. It also becomes the source of market-economic and democratic systems of society.

Liberal-capitalist (civil) society arose in the 18th century. Weber, following Marx, argued that it appeared as a result of a combination of a number of factors: experimental science, rational bourgeois capitalism, modern government, rational legal and administrative systems, modern art, etc. As a result of the combination of these social systems, capitalist society does not know itself equal in adaptation to the external environment.

The capitalist formation includes the following systems.

Original the system is formed by: favorable geographical conditions, colonial empires; the material needs of the bourgeoisie, peasants, workers; inequality of demo-social consumption, the beginning of the formation of a mass consumption society.

Basic the system is formed by the capitalist mode of social production, which is the unity of capitalist productive forces (capitalists, workers, machines) and capitalist economic relations (money, credit, bills, banks, world competition and trade).

Auxiliary The system of capitalist society is formed by a democratic legal state, a multi-party system, universal education, free art, church, media, science. This system determines the interests of capitalist society, justifies its existence, comprehends its essence and development prospects, and educates the people necessary for it.

Features of socio-economic formations

The European path of development includes the following: primitive communal, ancient, feudal, capitalist (liberal-capitalist), bourgeois socialist (social democratic). The last of them is convergent (mixed).

Economic societies differ: high efficiency (productivity) of the market economy, resource conservation; the ability to satisfy the growing needs of people, production, science, education; rapid adaptation to changing natural and social conditions.

A process of transformation has taken place in socio-economic formations informal values ​​and norms characteristic of a traditional (agrarian) society, in formal. This is the process of transforming a status society, where people were bound by many informal values ​​and norms, into a contract society, where people are bound by a contract for the duration of the realization of their interests.

Economic societies are characterized by: economic, political and spiritual inequality of classes; exploitation of workers, colonial peoples, women, etc.; economic crises; formational evolution; competition over markets and raw materials; possibility of further transformation.

In economic society, the civil community assumes the function of expressing and protecting the interests and rights of citizens before a democratic, legal, social state, forming a dialectical opposition with the latter. This community includes numerous voluntary non-governmental organizations: a multi-party system, independent media, socio-political organizations (trade unions, sports, etc.). Unlike the state, which is a hierarchical institution and based on orders, civil society has a horizontal structure, based on conscious voluntary self-discipline.

The economic system is based on a higher level of people's consciousness than the political one. Its participants act primarily individually, rather than collectively, based on personal interests. Their collective (joint) action is more consistent with their common interests than what occurs as a result of centralized government intervention (in political society). Participants in a socio-economic formation proceed from the following position (I have already quoted): “Many of his greatest achievements are due not to conscious aspirations and, especially not to the deliberately coordinated efforts of many, but to the process in which the individual plays a role that is not entirely comprehensible to himself. role". They are moderate in rationalistic pride.

In the 19th century In Western Europe, a deep crisis of liberal capitalist society arose, which was severely criticized by K. Marx and F. Engels in the “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In the 20th century it led to the “proletarian-socialist” (Bolshevik) revolution in Russia, the fascist revolution in Italy and the national socialist revolution in Germany. As a result of these revolutions, there was a revival of the political, Asian type of society in its Soviet, Nazi, fascist and other totalitarian forms.

In World War II, Nazi and fascist societies were destroyed. The union of Soviet totalitarian and Western democratic societies won. Then Soviet society was defeated by Western society in the Cold War. In Russia, the process of creating a new state-capitalist (mixed) formation has begun.

A number of scientists consider societies of the liberal-capitalist formation to be the most advanced. Fukuyama writes: “All modernizing countries, from Spain and Portugal to the Soviet Union, China, Taiwan and South Korea, have moved in this direction.” But Europe, in my opinion, has gone much further.

Dictionaries define a socio-economic formation as a historically specific type of society based on a specific mode of production. The method of production is one of the central concepts in Marxist sociology, characterizing a certain level of development of the entire complex of social relations. Karl Marx developed his basic idea of ​​the natural historical development of society by isolating the economic sphere from various spheres of social life and giving it special significance - as the main one, to a certain extent determining all the others, and of all types of social relations, he paid primary attention to production relations - those , in which people enter into not only the production of material goods, but also their distribution and consumption.

The logic here is quite simple and convincing: the main and determining thing in the life of any society is obtaining the means to live, without which no other relationships between people - neither spiritual, nor ethical, nor political - will simply be possible - for without these means there will be no of people. And in order to obtain the means of living (to produce them), people must unite, cooperate, enter into certain relationships for joint activities, which are called production

According to Marx's analytical scheme, the mode of production includes the following components. The productive forces that form the core of the economic sphere are a general name for the connection of people with the means of production, i.e., with the totality of material resources at work: raw materials, tools, equipment, tools, buildings and structures used in the production of goods. The main component of the productive forces are, of course, people themselves with their knowledge, skills and abilities, which allow them, with the help of means of production, from objects of the surrounding natural world to produce objects intended directly to satisfy human needs - their own or other people.

Productive forces are the most flexible, mobile, continuously developing part of this unity. This is understandable: people’s knowledge and skills are constantly increasing, new discoveries and inventions are appearing, in turn improving tools. Production relations are more inert, inactive, slow in their change, but they form the shell, the nutrient medium in which the productive forces develop. The inextricable unity of productive forces and production relations is called the basis, since it serves as a kind of basis, a support for the existence of society.

A superstructure grows on the foundation of the base. It represents the totality of all other social relations, “remaining minus production ones,” containing many different institutions, such as the state, family, religion or various types of ideologies existing in society. The main specificity of the Marxist position is the assertion that the nature of the superstructure is determined by the nature of the base. Since the nature of the base (the deep nature of production relations) changes, the nature of the superstructure also changes. Because, for example, the political structure of a feudal society differs from the political structure of a capitalist state, because the economic life of these two societies is significantly different and requires different ways of influencing the state on the economy, different legal systems, ideological beliefs, etc.

A historically specific stage of development of a given society, which is characterized by a specific mode of production (including its corresponding superstructure), is called a socio-economic formation. The change in methods of production and the transition from one socio-economic formation to another is caused by the antagonism between outdated production relations and the continuously developing productive forces, which become cramped in these old frameworks, and they tear it apart just as a grown chick breaks the shell within which it developed.

The base-superstructure model has inspired a variety of teachings, ranging from 18th-century Romanticism to analysis of family structure in modern society. The predominant form that these teachings took was class-theoretical in nature. That is, the relations of production in the base were seen as relations between social classes (say, between workers and capitalists), and therefore the statement that the base determines the superstructure means that the nature of the superstructure is largely determined by the economic interests of the dominant social class. This emphasis on classes seemed to “remove” the question of the impersonal action of economic laws.

The metaphor of base and superstructure and the socio-economic formation they define has proven to be a fruitful analytical tool. But it also gave rise to a huge number of discussions both within Marxism and outside it. One of the issues is the definition of industrial relations. Since their core is relations of ownership of the means of production, they must inevitably include legal definitions, but this model defines them as superstructural. Because of this, the analytical separation of the basis and superstructure seems difficult.

An important point of debate around the model of basis and superstructure was the point of view that the basis supposedly rigidly determines the superstructure. A number of critics argue that this model entails economic determinism. However, it should be borne in mind that K. Marx and F. Engels themselves never adhered to such a doctrine. Firstly, they understood that many elements of the superstructure can be relatively autonomous from the base and have their own laws of development. Secondly, they argued that the superstructure not only interacts with the base, but also quite actively influences it.

So, the historical period of development of a particular society, during which a given mode of production dominates, is called a socio-economic formation. The introduction of this concept into the sociological analysis of the periodization of societies has a number of advantages.

♦ The formational approach allows one to distinguish one period of social development from another according to fairly clear criteria.

♦ Using the formational approach, one can find common essential features in the life of different societies (countries and peoples) that are at the same stage of development even in different historical periods, and, on the contrary, find explanations for the differences in the development of two societies coexisting in the same period , but with different levels of development due to differences in production methods.

♦ The formational approach allows us to consider society as a single social organism, that is, to analyze all social phenomena based on the method of production in organic unity and interaction.

♦ The formational approach makes it possible to reduce the aspirations and actions of individuals to the actions of large masses of people.

Based on the formational approach, all human history is divided into five socio-economic formations. However, before moving on to their direct consideration, one should pay attention to the system-forming features that determine the parameters of each of the formations.

The first of these relates to the structure of labor as Marx defines it in his Capital. According to the labor theory of value, the goal of any economic system is to create use values, that is, useful things. However, in many economies (especially capitalist ones) people produce things not so much for their own use, but for exchange for other goods. All goods are produced by labor, and ultimately it is the labor time spent on their production that determines the value of exchange.

An employee’s working time can be divided into two periods. During the first, he produces goods whose value is equal to the cost of his existence - this is necessary labor. “The second period of labor - the one during which the worker works beyond the limits of necessary labor - although it costs him labor, the expenditure of labor power, it does not create any value for the worker. It forms surplus value.” Suppose the working day is ten hours. During part of it - say, eight hours - the worker will produce goods whose value is equal to the cost of his existence (subsistence). During the remaining two hours, the worker will create surplus value, which is appropriated by the owner of the means of production. And this is the second system-forming feature of a socio-economic formation.

The employee himself may be the owner, but the more developed the society, the less likely this is; in most socio-economic formations known to us, the means of production are owned not by the one who directly works with the help of them, but by someone else - a slave owner, a feudal lord, a capitalist. It should be noted that it is surplus value that is the basis, firstly, of private property, and secondly, of market relations.

Thus, we can identify the system-forming features of socio-economic formations that interest us.

The first of them is the relationship between necessary and surplus labor, which is most typical for a given formation. This ratio depends decisively on the level of development of the productive forces, and above all on technological factors. The lower the level of development of the productive forces, the greater the share of necessary labor in the total volume of any product produced; and vice versa - as productive forces improve, the share of surplus product steadily increases.

The second system-forming feature is the nature of ownership of the means of production that dominates in a given society. Now, based on these criteria, we will try to briefly review all five formations.

Primitive communal system (or primitive society). In this socio-economic formation, the method of production is characterized by an extremely low level of development of the productive forces. All labor is necessary; surplus labor is zero. Roughly speaking, this means that everything produced (more precisely, mined) is consumed without a trace, no surplus is formed, which means there is no possibility of either making savings or performing exchange transactions. Therefore, the primitive communal formation is characterized by practically elementary production relations based on social, or rather communal, ownership of the means of production. Private property simply cannot arise here due to the almost complete absence of surplus product: everything that is produced (more precisely, mined) is consumed without a trace, and any attempt to take away or appropriate something obtained by the hands of others will simply lead to the death of the one who has it taken away.

For the same reasons, there is no commodity production here (there is nothing to put up for exchange). It is clear that such a base corresponds to an extremely underdeveloped superstructure; People simply cannot appear who could afford to professionally engage in management, science, religious rites, etc.

A rather important point is the fate of prisoners who are captured during clashes between warring tribes: they are either killed, eaten, or accepted into the tribe. Forcing them to work forcibly does not make any sense: they will use everything they produce without reserve.

Slavery (slave-owning formation). Only the development of productive forces to such a level that causes the appearance of a surplus product, even in an insignificant volume, radically changes the fate of the above-mentioned captives. Now it becomes profitable to turn them into slaves, since the entire surplus of products produced by their labor comes at the undivided disposal of the owner. And the greater the number of slaves the owner has, the greater the amount of material wealth concentrated in his hands. In addition, the emergence of the same surplus product creates the material prerequisites for the emergence of the state, as well as, for a certain part of the population, professional pursuits in religious activity, science and art. That is, a superstructure as such arises.

Therefore, slavery as a social institution is defined as a form of property that gives one person the right to own another person. Thus, the main object of property here is people, acting not only as a personal, but also as a material element of the productive forces. In other words, like any other means of production, a slave is a thing with which its owner is free to do whatever he wants - buy, sell, exchange, donate, throw away as unnecessary, etc.

Slave labor existed in a variety of social settings, from the ancient world to the colonies of the West Indies and the plantations of the southern states of North America. Surplus labor here is no longer equal to zero: the slave produces products in a volume slightly exceeding the cost of his own food. At the same time, from the point of view of production efficiency, a number of problems always arise when using slave labor.

1. The barracks slave system is not always able to reproduce itself, and slaves must be obtained either by purchase in the slave trading markets or by conquest; Therefore, slave systems often tended to suffer from severe labor shortages.

2. Slaves require significant "force" supervision due to the threat of their revolts.

3. It is difficult to force slaves to perform labor tasks that require qualifications without additional incentives. The presence of these problems suggests that slavery cannot provide an adequate basis for continued economic growth. As for the superstructure, its characteristic feature is the almost complete exclusion of slaves from all forms of political, ideological and many other forms of spiritual life, since the slave is considered as one of the varieties of working cattle or a “talking instrument.”

Feudalism (feudal formation). American researchers J. Prower and S. Eisenstadt list five characteristics common to the most developed feudal societies:

1) lord-vassal relationship;

2) a personalized form of government, which is effective at the local rather than at the national level, and which has a relatively low level of division of functions;

3) land ownership, based on the grant of feudal estates (fiefs) in exchange for service, primarily military;

4) the existence of private armies;

5) certain rights of landowners in relation to serfs.

These features characterize an economic and political system that was most often decentralized (or weakly centralized) and dependent on a hierarchical system of personal connections within the nobility, despite the formal principle of a single line of authoritarianism going back to the king. This ensured collective defense and maintenance of order. The economic basis was a local organization of production, with the dependent peasantry providing the surplus product that the landowners needed to fulfill their political functions.

The main object of property in the feudal socio-economic formation is land. Therefore, the class struggle between landlords and peasants focuses primarily on the size of production units assigned to tenants, the terms of the lease, and control over the basic means of production such as pastures, drainage systems, and mills. Therefore, modern Marxist approaches argue that because the tenant peasant has a certain degree of control over production (for example, the possession of customary rights), "non-economic measures" are required to ensure landowners' control over the peasantry and the products of their labor. These measures represent basic forms of political and economic domination. It should be noted that, unlike capitalism, where workers are deprived of any control over the means of production, feudalism allows serfs to fairly effectively own some of these means, in return ensuring the appropriation of surplus labor in the form of rent.

Capitalism (capitalist formation). This type of economic organization in its ideal form can be very briefly defined by the presence of the following features:

1) private ownership and control over the economic instrument of production, i.e. capital;

2) driving economic activity to generate profit;

3) the market structure that regulates this activity;

4) appropriation of profit by capital owners (subject to state taxation);

5) ensuring the labor process by workers who act as free agents of production.

Historically, capitalism developed and grew to a dominant position in economic life simultaneously with the development of industrialization. However, some of its features can be found in the commercial sector of the pre-industrial European economy - and throughout the medieval period. We will not dwell here in detail on the characteristics of this socio-economic formation, since in modern sociology the view of capitalist society as identical to industrial society is largely widespread. We will move a more detailed consideration of it (as well as the question of the legitimacy of such an identification) into one of the subsequent chapters.

The most important characteristic of the capitalist mode of production: the development of productive forces reaches such a quantitative and qualitative level that makes it possible to increase the share of surplus labor to a size exceeding the share of necessary labor (here it is expressed in the form of wages). According to some data, in a modern high-tech company, the average employee works for himself (that is, produces a product worth his salary) for fifteen minutes out of an eight-hour working day. This indicates an approach to a situation where the entire product becomes surplus, turning the share of necessary labor into zero. Thus, the logic of the labor theory of value brings the trend of general historical development close to the idea of ​​communism.

This logic is as follows. The capitalist formation, having deployed mass production, gigantically increases the total volume of products produced and at the same time ensures an increase in the share of the surplus product, which at first becomes comparable to the share of the necessary product, and then begins to quickly exceed it. Therefore, before moving on to considering the concept of the fifth socio-economic formation, let us dwell on the general trend of changes in the ratio of these shares during the transition from one formation to another. Graphically, this trend is conventionally presented in the diagram (Fig. 18).

This process begins, as we remember, with the fact that in a primitive community all the product produced is necessary; there is simply no surplus. The transition to slavery means the emergence of a certain share of surplus product and at the same time an increase in the total volume of products produced in society. The trend continues with each subsequent transition, and modern capitalism (if it can still be called capitalism in the strict sense of the word), as we saw in the previous chapter, reaches a ratio of shares of necessary and surplus product of 1 to 30. If we extrapolate this trend into the future , then the conclusion is inevitable about the complete disappearance of the necessary product - the entire product will be surplus, just as in the primitive community the entire product was necessary. This is the main quality of the hypothetical fifth formation. We are already accustomed to calling it communist, but not everyone understands its characteristic features, which logically follow from the extrapolation described above. What does the disappearance of the required share of the product mean in accordance with the provisions of the labor theory of value?

It finds its expression in the following systemic qualities of the new formation.

1. Production ceases to be of a commodity nature, it becomes directly social.

2. This leads to the disappearance of private property, which also becomes public (and not just communal, as in the primitive formation).

3. If we consider that the necessary share of the product under capitalism was expressed in wages, then this too disappears. Consumption in this formation is organized in such a way that any member of society receives from public reserves everything he needs for a full life. In other words, the connection between the measure of labor and the measure of consumption disappears.

Rice. 18. Trends in changes in the ratio of necessary and surplus product

Communism (communist formation). Being more a doctrine than a practice, the concept of a communist formation refers to such future societies in which there will be no:

1) private property;

2) social classes;

3) forced (“enslaving people”) division of labor;

4) commodity-money relations.

The characteristics of the fifth formation directly follow from the properties listed above. K. Marx argued that communist societies would be formed gradually - after the revolutionary transformation of capitalist societies. He also noted that these four basic properties of the fifth formation in a certain (albeit very primitive) form are also characteristic of primitive tribal societies - a condition that he considered primitive communism. The logical construction of “genuine” communism, as we have already said, is derived by Marx and his followers as a direct extrapolation from the trends of the previous progressive development of socio-economic formations. It is no coincidence that the beginning of the creation of the communist system is considered as the end of the prehistory of human society and the beginning of its true history.

There are serious doubts that these ideas have been put into practice in modern societies. Most former "communist" countries maintained some degree of private property, a widely enforced division of labor, and a class system based on bureaucratic privilege. The actual development of societies that called themselves communist gave rise to discussions among the theorists of communism, some of them are of the opinion that a certain share of private property and a certain level of division of labor seem inevitable under communism.

So, what is the progressive essence of this historical process of consistent change of socio-economic formations?

The first criterion of progress, as noted by the classics of Marxism, is a consistent increase in the degree of freedom1 of living labor during the transition from one formation to another. In fact, if we pay attention to the main object of private property, we will see that under slavery it is people, under feudalism it is land, under capitalism it is capital (appearing in the most diverse forms). A serf peasant is actually freer than any slave. A worker is generally a legally free person, and without such freedom the development of capitalism is generally impossible.

The second criterion of progress in the transition from one formation to another is, as we have seen, a consistent (and significant) increase in the share of surplus labor in the total volume of social labor.

Despite the presence of a number of shortcomings of the formational approach (many of which stem, rather, from fanatical dogmatization, the absolutization of some provisions of Marxism by its most orthodox and ideological supporters), it can turn out to be quite fruitful in analyzing the periodization of the historical development of human society, in which we have yet to Once again make sure throughout the further presentation.

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.

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 method 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.