The primitive communal formation is characterized by:
1. primitive forms of labor organization (rare use of mechanisms, mainly manual individual labor, occasionally collective labor (hunting, farming);
2. absence of private property - common ownership of the means and results of labor;
3. equality and personal freedom;
4. the absence of coercive public power isolated from society;
5. weak social organization - the absence of states, unification into tribes based on consanguinity, joint decision-making.
The “Asian mode of production” was widespread in the ancient societies of the East (Egypt, China, Mesopotamia), located in the valleys of large rivers. The Asian production method included:
1. irrigation agriculture as the basis of the economy;
2. lack of private ownership of the main means of production (land, irrigation structures);
3. state ownership of land and means of production;
4. mass collective labor of free community members under strict control of the state (bureaucracy);
5. the presence of strong, centralized, despotic power.
The slaveholding socio-economic formation is fundamentally different from them:
1. private ownership of the means of production arose, including “living”, “talking” slaves;
2. social inequality and social (class) stratification;
3. state and public authority.
4. The feudal socio-economic formation was based on:
5. large land ownership of a special class of landowners - feudal lords;
6. the labor of free peasants, but economically (rarely politically) dependent on feudal lords;
7. special production relations in free craft centers - cities.
Under a capitalist socio-economic formation:
1. industry begins to play a major role in the economy;
2. the means of production become more complex - mechanization, unification of labor;
3. industrial means of production belong to the bourgeois class;
4. The bulk of labor is performed by free hired workers, economically dependent on the bourgeoisie.
Communist (socialist) formation (society of the future), according to Marx. Engels, Lenin, will be different:
1. lack of private ownership of the means of production;
2. state (public) ownership of the means of production;
3. the labor of workers, peasants, and intelligentsia, free from exploitation by private owners;
4. fair, uniform distribution of the total produced product among all members of society;
5. high level of development of productive forces and high organization of labor.
All history is viewed as a natural process of changing socio-economic formations. Each new formation matures in the depths of the previous one, denies it and then itself is denied by an even newer formation. Each formation is a higher type of organization of society.
The classics of Marxism also explain the mechanism of transition from one formation to another:
Productive forces are constantly developing and improving, but production relations remain the same. A conflict arises, a contradiction between the new level of productive forces and outdated production relations. Sooner or later, changes occur in the economic basis, either violently or peacefully - production relations, either gradually or through a radical break and replacing them with new ones, occur in accordance with the new level of productive forces.
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 values.
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.
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.
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
For the first time, the concept of socio-economic formation was defined by K. Marx. It is based on a materialistic understanding of history. The development of human society is considered as an unchanging and natural process of changing formations. There are five of them in total. The basis of each of them is a certain one that arises in the production process and during the distribution of material goods, their exchange and consumption, forming an economic basis, which in turn determines the legal and political superstructure, the structure of society, everyday life, family, and so on.
The emergence and development of formations is carried out according to special economic laws that operate until the transition to the next stage of development. One of them is the law of correspondence of production relations to the level and nature of the development of productive forces. Any formation goes through certain stages in its development. At the latter stage, a conflict occurs and the need arises to change the old method of production to a new one and, as a result, one formation, more progressive, replaces another.
So what is a socio-economic formation?
This is a historically established type of society, the development of which is based on a certain method of production. Any formation is a certain specific stage of human society.
What socio-economic formations are highlighted by supporters of this theory of the development of state and society?
Historically, the first formation is the primitive communal one. The type of production was determined by the established relations in the tribal community and the distribution of labor among its members.
As a result of development between peoples, a slave-owning socio-economic formation arises. The scope of communication is expanding. Such concepts as civilization and barbarism appear. This period was characterized by many wars, during which military booty and tribute were confiscated as a surplus product, and free labor appeared in the form of slaves.
The third stage of development is the emergence of a feudal formation. At this time, there were mass migrations of peasants to new lands, constant wars for subjects and land between feudal lords. The integrity of economic units had to be ensured by military force, and the role of the feudal lord was to maintain their integrity. War became one of the conditions of production.
Proponents identify the capitalist formation as the fourth stage of development of the state and society. This is the last stage, which is based on the exploitation of people. The means of production are developing, factories and factories are appearing. The role of the international market is increasing.
The last socio-economic formation is communist, which in its development passes through socialism and communism. At the same time, two types of socialism are distinguished - basically built and developed.
The theory of socio-economic formations arose in connection with the need to scientifically substantiate the steady movement of all countries of the world towards communism, the inevitability of the transition to this formation from capitalism.
Formational theory has a number of shortcomings. Thus, it takes into account only the economic factor of the development of states, which is of great importance, but is not fully decisive. In addition, opponents of the theory point out that in none of the countries does a socio-economic formation exist in its pure form.