Characteristics of the five socio-economic formations. The concept of socio-economic formation

(historical materialism), reflecting the laws of the historical development of society, ascending from simple primitive social forms of development to more progressive, historically defined type of society. This concept also reflects the social action of the categories and laws of dialectics, which marks the natural and inevitable transition of mankind from the "realm of necessity to the realm of freedom" - to communism. The category of socio-economic formation was developed by Marx in the first versions of Capital: "On the Critique of Political Economy." and in "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts 1857 - 1859". It is presented in its most developed form in Capital.

The thinker believed that all societies, despite their specificity (which Marx never denied), go through the same stages or stages of social development - socio-economic formations. Moreover, each socio-economic formation is a special social organism that differs from other social organisms (formations). In total, he distinguishes five such formations: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist; which the early Marx reduces to three: public (without private property), private property and again public, but at a higher level of social development. Marx believed that the determining factors in social development are economic relations, the mode of production, in accordance with which he named formations. The thinker became the founder of the formational approach in social philosophy, who believed that there are common social patterns in the development of various societies.

The socio-economic formation consists of the economic basis of society and the superstructure, interconnected and interacting with each other. The main thing in this interaction is the economic basis, the economic development of society.

The economic basis of society - the defining element of the socio-economic formation, which is the interaction of the productive forces of society and production relations.

The productive forces of society - forces with the help of which the production process is carried out, consisting of a person as the main productive force and means of production (buildings, raw materials, machines and mechanisms, production technologies, etc.).

industrial relations - relations between people that arise in the process of production, related to their place and role in the production process, the relationship of ownership of the means of production, the relationship to the product of production. As a rule, the one who owns the means of production plays a decisive role in production, the rest are forced to sell their labor power. The concrete unity of the productive forces of society and production relations forms mode of production, determining the economic basis of society and the entire socio-economic formation as a whole.

Rising above the economic base superstructure, representing a system of ideological social relations, expressed in the forms of social consciousness, in views, theories of illusions, feelings of various social groups and society as a whole. The most significant elements of the superstructure are law, politics, morality, art, religion, science, and philosophy. The superstructure is determined by the basis, but it can have an inverse effect on the basis. The transition from one socio-economic formation to another is connected, first of all, with the development of the economic sphere, the dialectic of the interaction of productive forces and production relations.

In this interaction, the productive forces are a dynamically developing content, and production relations are a form that allows the productive forces to exist and develop. At a certain stage, the development of the productive forces comes into conflict with the old production relations, and then the time comes for a social revolution, which is carried out as a result of the class struggle. With the replacement of old production relations by new ones, the mode of production and the economic basis of society change. With the change of the economic base, the superstructure also changes, therefore, there is a transition from one socio-economic formation to another.

Formational and civilizational concepts of social development.

In social philosophy, there are many concepts of the development of society. However, the main ones are the formational and civilizational concepts of social development. The formational concept, developed by Marxism, believes that there are general patterns of development for all societies, regardless of their specifics. The central concept of this approach is the socio-economic formation.

Civilizational concept of social development denies the general patterns of development of societies. The civilizational approach is most fully represented in the concept of A. Toynbee.

Civilization, according to Toynbee, is a stable community of people united by spiritual traditions, a similar way of life, geographical, historical boundaries. History is a non-linear process. This is the process of birth, life, death of unrelated civilizations. Toynbee divides all civilizations into main (Sumerian, Babylonian, Minoan, Hellenic - Greek, Chinese, Hindu, Islamic, Christian) and local (American, Germanic, Russian, etc.). The main civilizations leave a bright mark in the history of mankind, indirectly influence (especially religiously) other civilizations. Local civilizations, as a rule, become isolated within national boundaries. Each civilization historically develops in accordance with the driving forces of history, the main of which are challenge and response.

Call - a concept that reflects threats coming to civilization from outside (unfavorable geographical position, lagging behind other civilizations, aggression, wars, climate change, etc.) and requiring an adequate response, without which civilization may die.

Answer - a concept that reflects an adequate response of a civilizational organism to a challenge, that is, the transformation, modernization of civilization in order to survive and further develop. An important role in the search for and implementation of an adequate response is played by the activities of talented God-chosen outstanding people, the creative minority, the elite of society. It leads the inert majority, which sometimes “extinguishes” the energy of the minority. Civilization, like any other living organism, goes through the following cycles of life: birth, growth, breakdown, disintegration, followed by death and complete disappearance. As long as civilization is full of strength, as long as the creative minority is able to lead society, respond adequately to incoming challenges, it develops. With the depletion of vital forces, any challenge can lead to the breakdown and death of civilization.

Closely related to the civilizational approach cultural approach, developed by N.Ya. Danilevsky and O. Spengler. The central concept of this approach is culture, interpreted as a certain inner meaning, a certain goal of the life of a particular society. Culture is a system-forming factor in the formation of socio-cultural integrity, called N. Ya. Danilevsky cultural-historical type. Like a living organism, each society (cultural-historical type) goes through the following stages of development: birth and growth, flowering and fruiting, wilting and death. Civilization is the highest stage in the development of culture, the period of flowering and fruiting.

O. Spengler also identifies individual cultural organisms. This means that there is no single universal culture and cannot be. O. Spengler distinguishes cultures that have completed their cycle of development, cultures that have died ahead of time and are becoming cultures. Each cultural "organism", according to Spengler, is measured in advance for a certain (about a millennium) period, depending on the internal life cycle. Dying, culture is reborn into civilization (dead extension and "soulless intellect", sterile, ossified, mechanical formation), which marks the old age and disease of culture.

Socio-economic formation- the central concept of the Marxist theory of society or historical materialism: "... a society that is at a certain stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar distinctive character." Through the concept of O.E.F. ideas about society as a certain system were fixed and at the same time the main periods of its historical development were singled out.

It was believed that any social phenomenon could only be correctly understood in relation to the particular E.E.F. of which it was an element or product. The very term "formation" was borrowed by Marx from geology.

Completed theory O.E.F. Marx did not formulate, however, if we summarize his various statements, we can conclude that Marx singled out three eras or formations of world history according to the criterion of dominant production relations (forms of ownership): 1) primary formation (archaic pre-class societies); 2) secondary, or "economic" social formation based on private property and commodity exchange and including Asiatic, ancient, feudal and capitalist modes of production; 3) communist formation.

Marx paid the main attention to the "economic" formation, and within its framework - to the bourgeois system. At the same time, social relations were reduced to economic (“basis”), and world history was viewed as a movement through social revolutions to a pre-established phase - communism.

The term O.E.F. introduced by Plekhanov and Lenin. Lenin, on the whole, following the logic of Marx's concept, greatly simplified and narrowed it, identifying O.E.F. with the mode of production and reducing it to a system of production relations. Canonization of the concept of O.E.F. in the form of the so-called "five-member" was carried out by Stalin in the "Short Course on the History of the CPSU (b)". Representatives of historical materialism believed that the concept of O.E.F. allows you to notice the repetition in history and thus give its strictly scientific analysis. Change of formations forms the main line of progress, formations perish due to internal antagonisms, but with the advent of communism, the law of formation change ceases to operate.

As a result of the transformation of Marx's hypothesis into an infallible dogma, formational reductionism was established in Soviet social science, i.e. the reduction of the entire diversity of the world of people only to formational characteristics, which was expressed in the absolutization of the role of the common in history, the analysis of all social ties along the basis-superstructure line, ignoring the human beginning of history and the free choice of people. In its established form, the concept of O.E.F. together with the idea of ​​linear progress that gave birth to it, already belongs to the history of social thought.

However, overcoming formational dogma does not mean refusing to raise and resolve issues of social typology. Types of society and its nature, depending on the tasks to be solved, can be distinguished according to various criteria, including socio-economic ones.

At the same time, it is important to remember the high degree of abstractness of such theoretical constructions, their schematic nature, the inadmissibility of their ontologization, direct identification with reality, as well as their use for building social forecasts, developing specific political tactics. If this is not taken into account, then the result, as experience shows, is social deformations and catastrophes.

Types of socio-economic formations:

1. Primitive communal system (primitive communism) . The level of economic development is extremely low, the tools used are primitive, so there is no possibility of producing a surplus product. There is no class division. The means of production are in public ownership. Labor is universal, property is only collective.

2. Asian way of production (other names - political society, state-communal system). At the later stages of the existence of primitive society, the level of production made it possible to create a surplus product. Communities united into large formations with centralized administration.

Of these, a class of people gradually emerged, occupied exclusively with management. This class gradually isolated itself, accumulated privileges and material benefits in its hands, which led to the emergence of private property, property inequality and led to the transition to slavery. The administrative apparatus acquired an increasingly complex character, gradually transforming into a state.

The existence of the Asian mode of production as a separate formation is not universally recognized and has been a topic of discussion throughout the history of history; in the works of Marx and Engels, he is also not mentioned everywhere.

3.Slavery . There is private ownership of the means of production. A separate class of slaves is engaged in direct labor - people deprived of their liberty, owned by slave owners and considered as "talking tools". Slaves work but do not own the means of production. Slave owners organize production and appropriate the results of the labor of slaves.

4.Feudalism . Classes of feudal lords - owners of land - and dependent peasants, who are personally dependent on feudal lords, stand out in society. Production (mainly agricultural) is carried out by the labor of dependent peasants exploited by feudal lords. Feudal society is characterized by a monarchical type of government and a social class structure.

5. Capitalism . There is a general right of private ownership of the means of production. Classes of capitalists stand out - the owners of the means of production - and workers (proletarians) who do not own the means of production and work for the capitalists for hire. The capitalists organize production and appropriate the surplus produced by the workers. A capitalist society can have various forms of government, but the most characteristic of it are various variations of democracy, when power belongs to elected representatives of society (parliament, president).

The main mechanism that encourages labor is economic coercion - the worker does not have the opportunity to provide for his life in any other way than by receiving wages for the work performed.

6. Communism . The theoretical (never existed in practice) structure of society, which should replace capitalism. Under communism, all means of production are in public ownership, private ownership of the means of production is completely eliminated. Labor is universal, there is no class division. It is assumed that a person works consciously, striving to bring the greatest benefit to society and not needing external incentives, such as economic coercion.

At the same time, society provides any available benefits to each person. Thus, the principle “To each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” is realized. Commodity-money relations are abolished. The ideology of communism encourages collectivism and presupposes the voluntary recognition by each member of society of the priority of public interests over personal ones. Power is exercised by the whole society as a whole, on the basis of self-government.

As a socio-economic formation, transitional from capitalism to communism, is considered socialism, in which the socialization of the means of production takes place, but commodity-money relations, economic coercion to work and a number of other features characteristic of a capitalist society are preserved. Under socialism, the principle is implemented: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."

Development of Karl Marx's views on historical formations

Marx himself, in his later writings, considered three new "modes of production": "Asiatic", "Ancient" and "Germanic". However, this development of Marx's views was later ignored in the USSR, where only one orthodox version of historical materialism was officially recognized, according to which "five socio-economic formations are known to history: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist."

To this it must be added that in the preface to one of his main early works on this topic: "On the Critique of Political Economy", Marx mentioned the "ancient" (as well as "Asiatic") mode of production, while in other works he (as well as Engels) wrote about the existence in antiquity of a "slave-owning mode of production."

The historian of antiquity M. Finley pointed to this fact as one of the evidence of the poor study by Marx and Engels of the issues of the functioning of ancient and other ancient societies. Another example: Marx himself discovered that the community appeared among the Germans only in the 1st century, and by the end of the 4th century it had completely disappeared from them, but despite this he continued to assert that the community everywhere in Europe had been preserved from primitive times.

Socio-economic formation- according to the Marxist concept of the historical process, a society that is at a certain stage of historical development, characterized by the level of development of productive forces and the historical type of economic production relations. At the heart of each socio-economic formation is a certain mode of production (basis), and production relations form its essence. The system of production relations that form the economic basis of the formation corresponds to a political, legal and ideological superstructure. The structure of the formation includes not only economic, but also social relations, as well as forms of life, family, lifestyle. The reason for the transition from one stage of social development to another is the discrepancy between the increased productive forces and the preserved type of production relations. According to Marxist teaching, humanity in the course of its development must go through the following stages: primitive communal system, slave system, feudalism, capitalism, communism.

The primitive communal system in Marxism is considered as the first non-antagonistic socio-economic formation through which all peoples without exception passed. As a result of the decomposition of the primitive communal system, a transition was made to class, antagonistic socio-economic formations. The early class formations include the slave-owning system and feudalism, while many peoples moved from the primitive communal system immediately to feudalism, bypassing the stage of slave ownership. Pointing to this phenomenon, the Marxists substantiated for some countries the possibility of a transition from feudalism to socialism, bypassing the stage of capitalism. Karl Marx himself singled out a special Asian mode of production and the formation corresponding to it among the early class formations. The question of the Asiatic mode of production remained debatable in the philosophical and historical literature, without having received an unambiguous solution. Capitalism was considered by Marx as the last antagonistic form of the social production process, it was to be replaced by a non-antagonistic communist formation.
The change in socio-economic formations is explained by the contradictions between the new productive forces and the outdated production relations, which are transformed from forms of development into fetters of the productive forces. The transition from one formation to another takes place in the form of a social revolution, which resolves the contradictions between the productive forces and production relations, as well as between the base and the superstructure. Marxism pointed to the presence of transitional forms from one formation to another. Transitional states of society are usually characterized by the presence of various socio-economic structures that do not cover the economy and life in general. These structures can represent both the remnants of the old and the embryos of a new socio-economic formation. The diversity of historical development is associated with the uneven pace of historical development: some peoples rapidly progressed in their development, others lagged behind. The interaction between them was of a different nature: it accelerated or, conversely, slowed down the course of the historical development of individual peoples.
The collapse of the world system of socialism at the end of the 20th century, the disappointment in communist ideas led to a critical attitude of researchers to the Marxist formational scheme. Nevertheless, the idea of ​​singling out stages in the world historical process is recognized as sound. In historical science, in the teaching of history, the concepts of the primitive communal system, the slave-owning system, feudalism and capitalism are actively used. Along with this, the theory of stages of economic growth developed by W. Rostow and O. Toffler has found wide application: agrarian society (traditional society) - industrial society (consumer society) - post-industrial society (information society).

Dictionaries define a socio-economic formation as a historically defined type of society based on a certain mode of production. The mode 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 worked out his main idea of ​​the natural-historical development of society by isolating the economic sphere from various spheres of social life and giving it special importance - as the main one, to a certain extent determining all the others, and of all types of social relations, he paid priority attention to relations of production - those , which people enter into about 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 factor in the life of any society is the acquisition of means of subsistence, without which no other relations between people simply can develop - neither spiritual, nor ethical, nor political - because without these means there will be no of people. And in order to obtain means of subsistence (to produce them), people must unite, cooperate, enter into certain relations for joint activities, which are called production relations.

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 generalized name for the connection of people with the means of production, that is, with the totality of material resources that are in 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, the people themselves with their knowledge, skills and habits, which allow them, using the means of production, from the objects of the natural world to produce objects designed directly to satisfy human needs - their own or other people.

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

A superstructure grows on the foundation of the base. It is the totality of all other social relations "remaining minus production", containing many different institutions, such as the state, family, religion, or various types of ideologies that exist 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 basis. As the nature of the basis (the deep nature of production relations) changes, so does the nature of the superstructure. 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 essentially different and requires different methods of state influence on the economy, different legislative systems, ideological convictions, etc.

A historically defined stage in the 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 the modes of production and the transition from one socio-economic formation to another is caused by the antagonism between obsolete relations of production and continuously developing productive forces, which become cramped within these old frameworks, and they break it like a grown chick breaks the shell inside which it developed.

The base-and-superstructure model has breathed life into many teachings, ranging from eighteenth-century romanticism to the analysis of family structure in modern society. The predominant form that these teachings took was of a class-theoretical character. That is, the relations of production in the base were seen as relations between social classes (say, between workers and capitalists), and hence the assertion 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. Such an emphasis on classes, as it were, "removed" the question of the impersonal action of economic laws.

The metaphor of base and superstructure and the socio-economic structure they define has proved to be a fruitful analytical tool. But it has also generated a great deal of controversy both within and outside Marxism. One of the points of the problem is the definition of industrial relations. Since their core is the ownership of the means of production, they must inevitably include legal definitions, and this model defines them as superstructural. Because of this, the analytical separation of the base and the superstructure seems difficult.

An important subject of controversy around the basis and superstructure model was the point of view that the basis allegedly 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. First, they understood that many elements of the superstructure can be relatively autonomous from the basis 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 this mode of production dominates, is called the 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 makes it possible to distinguish one period of the development of society from another according to fairly clear criteria.

♦ Using the formational approach, one can find common essential features in the life of various societies (countries and peoples) that are at the same stage of development even in different historical periods, and vice versa - to 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 on the basis of the mode 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, the entire human history is divided into five socio-economic formations. However, before proceeding to their direct consideration, one should pay attention to the backbone features that determine the parameters of each of the formations.

The first of these refers to the structure of labor as defined by Marx 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 in exchange for other goods. All commodities are produced by labor, and ultimately it is the labor time involved in their production that determines the value of exchange.

The working time of an employee can be conditionally divided into two periods. During the first, he produces commodities whose value is equal to the value of his existence - this is necessary labor. “The second period of labor is that during which the worker works already beyond the limits of necessary labor, although it costs him labor, the expenditure of labor power, however, does not form any value for the worker. It forms surplus value.” Suppose the working day is ten hours long. During part of it - say eight hours - the worker will produce goods, the cost of which 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 the socio-economic formation.

The worker himself may be the owner, but the more developed the society, the less likely it 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, feudal lord, 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 single out the system-forming features of socio-economic formations that are of interest to us.

The first of these is the ratio between necessary and surplus labor, the most typical for this 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 productive forces, the greater the proportion of necessary labor in the total volume of any product produced; and vice versa, as the productive forces improve, the share of the surplus product steadily increases.

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

Primitive communal system (or primitive society). With a given socio-economic formation, the mode 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 that is produced (more precisely, mined) is consumed without a trace, no surplus is formed, which means that there is no way to either make savings or carry out exchange transactions. Therefore, the primitive communal formation is characterized by practically elementary production relations based on public, or rather communal, ownership of the means of production. Private property simply cannot arise here due to the almost complete absence of a surplus product: everything that is produced (more precisely, mined) is consumed without a trace, and any attempt to take away, appropriate something obtained by the hands of others will simply lead to the death of the one who has it. take away.

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

A rather important point is the fate of the captives who are captured during the skirmishes of the warring tribes: they are either killed, or eaten, or accepted into the tribe. It makes no sense to force them to work: they will use everything they produce without a trace.

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 amount, radically changes the fate of the aforementioned captives. Now it becomes profitable to turn them into slaves, since the entire surplus of products produced by their labor goes to the undivided disposal of the owner. And the more slaves the owner possesses, the greater the amount of material wealth is concentrated in his hands. In addition, the appearance 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 religious activities, science and art. That is, there is a superstructure as such.

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, who act 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, etc.

Slave labor existed under a variety of social conditions, 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 an amount slightly exceeding the cost of his own subsistence. At the same time, from the point of view of production efficiency, the use of slave labor always raises a number of problems.

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

2. Slaves require significant "power" supervision due to the threat of their rebellions.

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 sustained 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 tool”.

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

1) relations of the lord-vassal type;

2) a personalized form of government that is effective locally rather than nationally, and which has a relatively low level of separation of functions;

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

4) the existence of private armies;

5) certain rights of landlords in relation to serfs.

These features characterize the economic and political system, which was most often decentralized (or weakly centralized) and depended on a hierarchical system of personal ties within the nobility, despite the formal principle of a single line of authoritarianism going back to the king. This provided collective defense and maintenance of order. The economic basis was the local organization of production, when the dependent peasantry delivered 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 landowners and peasants focuses primarily on the size of the production units assigned to tenants, the terms of the lease, as well as control over the main means of production, such as pastures, drainage systems, 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 law), “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 the workers are deprived of any control over the means of production, feudalism allows the serfs to fairly effectively own some of these means, in return providing themselves with 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) activation of economic activity for profit;

3) the market structure that regulates this activity;

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

5) providing the labor process with 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 entire 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. A more detailed consideration of it (as well as the question of the legitimacy of such an identification) we will transfer to one of the subsequent chapters.

The most important characteristic of the capitalist mode of production is that the development of the productive forces reaches such a quantitative and qualitative level that it is 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 reports, in a modern high-tech firm, the average employee works for himself (i.e., produces a product worth his salary) for fifteen minutes 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 to 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 developed mass production, enormously increases the total volume of output and at the same time ensures an increase in the share of the surplus product, which at first becomes comparable with the share of the necessary product, and then begins to quickly exceed it. Therefore, before proceeding to consider the concept of the fifth socio-economic formation, let us dwell on the general trend in the change in the ratio of these shares in the transition from one formation to another. Graphically, this trend is conditionally represented in the diagram (Fig. 18).

This process begins, as we remember, with the fact that in the primitive community the entire product produced is necessary, there is simply no surplus. The transition to slavery means the appearance of a certain share of the 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 the shares of necessary and surplus product as 1 to 30. If we extrapolate this trend into the future , then the conclusion about the complete disappearance of the necessary product is inevitable - 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 necessary 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 have a commodity character, 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 take into account that the necessary share of the product under capitalism was expressed in wages, then it also disappears. Consumption in this formation is organized in such a way that any member of society receives from public stocks everything that 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 the ratio of the necessary and surplus product

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

1) private property;

2) social classes;

3) forced ("enslaving man") division of labor;

4) commodity-money relations.

The characteristic of the fifth formation follows directly 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 as 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 tendencies of the previous progressive development of socio-economic formations. It is no coincidence that the beginning of the creation of the communist system is regarded 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 contemporary societies. Most of the former "communist" countries retained both a certain amount of private property and a widely enforced division of labor, as well as a class system based on bureaucratic privileges. The actual development of societies that called themselves communist has given rise to discussions among communist theorists, some of whom are of the opinion that a certain amount 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 successive 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 in the transition from one formation to another. Indeed, 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 (acting in the most diverse forms). The serf is really freer than any slave. The 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 be quite fruitful in the analysis of the periodization of the historical development of human society, in which we have yet to times to be convinced throughout the further presentation.

On May 5, 1818, a man was born who was destined to become the greatest scientist and revolutionary. K. Marx made a theoretical revolution in social science. Marx's scientific merits are recognized even by his ardent opponents. We publish articles devoted to Marx, not only by Russian scholars, but also by prominent Western philosophers and sociologists R. Aron and E. Fromm, who did not consider themselves Marxists, but highly appreciated the theoretical heritage of the great thinker.

1. Center and periphery of the materialistic understanding of history

The greatest discovery of K. Marx was the materialistic understanding of history created by him in collaboration with F. Engels. Its main provisions remain in force today.

In the philosophy and methodology of scientific knowledge, the view that every scientific theory consists, firstly, of a central core, and secondly, of its surrounding periphery, has become widespread. Revealing the inconsistency of at least one idea that is part of the core of the theory means the destruction of this core and the refutation of this theory as a whole. The situation is different with the ideas that form the peripheral part of the theory. Their refutation and replacement by other ideas do not in themselves call into question the truth of the theory as a whole.

The core of the materialist understanding of history is, in my opinion, six ideas that can rightly be called central.

First position historical materialism is that a necessary condition for the existence of people is the production of material goods. Material production is the basis of all human activity.

Second position is that production always has a social character and always takes place in a definite social form. The social form in which the production process takes place is the system of socio-economic or, as the Marxists also call them, production relations.

Third position: there is not one, but several types of economic (production) relations, and thus several qualitatively different systems of these relations. It follows from this that production can and does take place in various social forms. Thus, there are several types or forms of social production. These types of social production were called modes of production. Each mode of production is production taken in a definite social form.

The existence of slave-owning, feudal and capitalist modes of production is now essentially recognized by almost all scientists, including those who do not share the Marxist point of view and do not use the term "mode of production". Slave-owning, feudal and capitalist modes of production are not only types of social production, but also stages of its development. After all, there is no doubt that the beginnings of capitalism appear only in the 15th-14th centuries, that it was preceded by feudalism, which took shape, at the earliest, only in the 6th-9th centuries, and that the flowering of ancient society was associated with the widespread use of slaves in production. The existence of a continuity between the ancient, feudal and capitalist economic systems is also indisputable. And the identification of this fact inevitably raises the question: why in one era one system of economic relations dominated, in another - another, in the third - the third.

Before the eyes of K. Marx and F. Engels, the industrial revolution was going on. And where machine industry penetrated, feudal relations inevitably collapsed and capitalist relations were established. And the answer to the above question naturally suggested itself: the nature of economic (production) relations is determined by the level of development of the social forces that create the social product, i.e., the productive forces of society. The change in the systems of economic relations, and thus the main methods of production, is based on the development of the productive forces. Takovo fourth position historical materialism.

As a result, not only was a solid foundation laid for the economists' long-established conviction of the objectivity of capitalist economic relations, but it also became clear that not only capitalist, but all economic relations in general, do not depend on the consciousness and will of people. And existing independently of the consciousness and will of people, economic relations determine the interests of both groups of people and individuals, determine their consciousness and will, and thereby their actions.

Thus, the system of economic (production) relations is nothing but an objective source of social ideas, which the old materialists searched in vain and could not find, is a social being (in the narrow sense), or social matter. Fifth provision historical materialism is the thesis about the materiality of economic (production) relations. The system of economic relations is material in the sense and only in the sense that it is primary in relation to social consciousness.

With the discovery of social matter, materialism was extended to the phenomena of social life, became a philosophical doctrine, equally related to nature and society. It is precisely such a comprehensive, completed to the top materialism that received the name of dialectical. Thus, the notion that dialectical materialism was first created and then extended to society is profoundly erroneous. On the contrary, only when the materialistic understanding of history was created did materialism become dialectical, but not before. The essence of the new Marxian materialism lies in the materialistic understanding of history.

According to the materialistic understanding of history, the system of economic (production) relations is the basis, the basis of any particular individual society. And it was natural to base the classification of individual concrete societies, their subdivisions into types, on the nature of their economic structure. Societies that have as their foundation the same system of economic relations, based on one mode of production, belong to the same type; Societies based on different modes of production belong to different types of society. These types of society, identified on the basis of the socio-economic structure, are called socio-economic formations. There are as many of them as there are basic methods of production.

Just as the main modes of production are not only types, but also stages of development of social production, socio-economic formations are types of society that are at the same time stages of world-historical development. This sixth position materialistic understanding of history.

The concept of the main modes of production as types of production and stages of its development and the concept of socio-economic formations as the main types of society and stages of world-historical development are included in the core of historical materialism. Judgments about how many modes of production exist, how many of them are the main ones, and about how many socio-economic formations there are, in what order and how they replace each other, belong to the peripheral part of the materialist understanding of history.

The scheme for the change of socio-economic formations, created by K. Marx and F. Engels, was based on the periodization of world history, which had been established by that time in historical science, in which three epochs were initially distinguished (antique, medieval, new), and later to them was added as the previous ancient era of the Ancient East. With each of these world-historical epochs, the founders of Marxism associated a certain socio-economic formation. It is hardly necessary to quote the well-known statement of K. Marx about the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and bourgeois modes of production. Continuing to develop their scheme, K. Marx and F. Engels later, based mainly on the work of L. G. Morgan "Ancient Society" (1877), came to the conclusion that the antagonistic modes of production were preceded by primitive communal, or primitive communist . According to their concept of the present and future of mankind, the capitalist society should be replaced by a communist socio-economic formation. Thus, a scheme of human development arose, in which five formations that already existed and partly continue to exist appear: primitive communist, Asian, ancient, feudal and bourgeois, and one more, which does not yet exist, but which, according to the founders of Marxism, must inevitably arise - communist.

When this or that truly scientific theory is created, it becomes relatively independent and in relation to its own creators. Therefore, not all the ideas of even its creators, not to mention their followers, and directly related to the problems that this theory poses and solves, can be considered as components of this theory. So, for example, F. Engels at one time put forward the position that in the early stages of human development, social orders were determined not so much by the production of material goods, but by the production of the person himself (child production). And although this proposition was put forward by one of the creators of the materialistic understanding of history, it cannot be considered as entering not only into the central core, but also into the peripheral part of this theory. It is incompatible with the basic tenets of historical materialism. This was once pointed out by G. Kunov. But more importantly, it is false.

K. Marx and F. Engels spoke out on a wide variety of issues. K. Marx had a certain system of views on the Eastern (Asian), ancient and feudal societies, F. Engels - on the primitive. But their conceptions of primitiveness, antiquity, etc., are not included as components (even peripheral ones) neither in the materialist understanding of history, nor in Marxism as a whole. And the obsolescence and even the outright fallacy of certain ideas of K. Marx and F. Engels about primitiveness, antiquity, religion, art, etc. cannot in the least indicate the failure of the materialistic understanding of history. Even revealing the inaccuracy of certain ideas of Marx included in his theory of capitalist economics, which is one of the main parts of Marxism, does not directly affect the central core of the materialist conception of history.

In Russia before the revolution and abroad, both before and now, the materialistic understanding of history was criticized. In the USSR, such criticism began sometime in 1989 and acquired an avalanche after August 1991. In fact, it would be a stretch to call all this criticism. It was a real persecution. And they began to crack down on historical materialism in the same ways that it was previously defended. In Soviet times, historians were told: whoever is against the materialistic understanding of history is not a Soviet person. The argument of the "democrats" was no less simple: in Soviet times there was a Gulag, which means that historical materialism is false from beginning to end. The materialistic understanding of history, as a rule, was not refuted. Just as a matter of course, they spoke of his complete scientific failure. And those few who nevertheless tried to refute it acted according to a well-established scheme: attributing deliberate nonsense to historical materialism, they argued that it was nonsense, and triumphed. The offensive against the materialistic understanding of history that unfolded after August 1991 was greeted with sympathy by many historians. Some of them even actively joined the fight. One of the reasons for the hostility of a considerable number of specialists to historical materialism was that it had previously been imposed on them by force. This inevitably gave rise to a feeling of protest. Another reason was that Marxism, having become the dominant ideology and a means of justifying the “socialist” (in reality, having nothing to do with socialism) orders existing in our country, was reborn: from a coherent system of scientific views it turned into a set of stamped phrases used in as spells and slogans. Real Marxism has been replaced by the appearance of Marxism - pseudo-Marxism. This affected all parts of Marxism, not excluding the materialistic understanding of history. What F. Engels feared most of all happened. “... The materialistic method,” he wrote, “turns into its opposite when it is used not as a guiding thread in historical research, but as a ready-made template according to which historical facts are cut and redrawn.”

At the same time, not only did the real provisions of the materialist understanding of history turn into dead schemes, but such theses were presented as immutable Marxist truths, which in no way followed from historical materialism. It suffices to give an example. For a long time it has been affirmed in our country: Marxism teaches that the first class society can only be a slave-owning society and no other. It is a fact that the first class societies were those of the ancient East. This led to the conclusion that these societies were slave-owning. Anyone who thought otherwise was automatically declared anti-Marxist. In the societies of the Ancient East, there were indeed slaves, although their exploitation was never the leading form. This allowed historians to somehow substantiate the position that these societies belonged to the slave-owning formation. The situation was worse when there were no slaves in societies that were supposed to be slave-owning. Then the slaves were declared such direct producers who were not in any way, and the society was characterized as early slave-owning.

Historical materialism was considered as such a method that allows, even before the start of the study of a particular society, to establish what will be found in it by the researcher. It was hard to come up with more nonsense. In fact, the materialistic understanding of history does not anticipate the results of research, it only indicates how to search in order to understand the essence of a particular society.

However, it would be wrong to believe that in order to reverse the transformation of historical materialism from the template under which the facts were adjusted, as it was with us for a long time, into a genuine method of historical research, it is enough to return to the origins, to restore the rights of everything that was once created K. Marx and F. Engels. The materialistic understanding of history needs a serious update, which involves not only the introduction of new provisions that its founders did not have, but also the rejection of a number of their theses.

None of the ideas that make up the core of the materialist understanding of history has ever been refuted by anyone. In this sense, historical materialism is unshakable. As for its periphery, much of it is outdated and must be replaced and supplemented.

Due to the limited volume of the article, out of a large number of problems of historical materialism that need to be developed, I will take only one, but perhaps the most important one - the doctrine of socio-economic formations.

2. Socio-economic formation and socio-historical organism

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

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

For the historian, the first three meanings of the term "society" are of particular importance. Socio-historical organisms are the initial, elementary, primary subjects of the historical process, from which all other, more complex subjects of it are composed - sociological systems of different levels. Each of the sociological systems of any hierarchical level was also the subject of the historical process. The highest, ultimate subject of the historical process is human society as a whole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Realists defended a different point of view. They believed that the general exists really, outside and independently of human consciousness and forms a special world, different from the sensual world of individual phenomena. This special world of the general is by its nature spiritual, ideal and primary in relation to the world of separate things.

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

Thus, there are two different types of objective existence in the world: one type - independent existence, as the separate exists, and the second - existence only in the separate and through the separate, as the general exists. Unfortunately, in our philosophical language there are no terms for designating these two different forms of objective existence. Sometimes, however, it is said that the individual exists as such, while the general, while really existing, does not exist as such. In what follows, I will designate independent existence as self-existence, as self-existence, and existence in another and through another as other-existence, or as other-being.

In order to cognize the general (essence, law, etc.), it is necessary to “extract” it from the individual, “purify” it from the individual, present it in a “pure” form, that is, in one in which it can exist only in thinking. The process of “extracting” the general from the particular, in which it actually exists, in which it is hidden, cannot be anything other than the process of creating a “pure” general. The form of existence of the "pure" general is concepts and their systems - hypotheses, concepts, theories, etc. In consciousness and non-existent, the general appears as self-existent, as separate. But this self-existence is not real, but ideal. Here we have an individual, but not a real individual, but an ideal one.

After this digression into the theory of knowledge, we return to the problem of formation. Since each specific socio-economic formation is a general one, it can and always exists in the real world only in separate societies, sociohistorical organisms, moreover, as their deep general basis, their inner essence and, therefore, their type.

The commonality between sociohistorical organisms belonging to the same socio-economic formation, of course, is not limited to their socio-economic structure. But what unites all these social organisms, determines their belonging to one type, first of all, of course, is the presence in all of them of the same system of production relations. Everything else that makes them related is derived from this fundamental commonality. That is why V. I. Lenin repeatedly defined the socio-economic formation as a set or system of certain production relations. However, at the same time, he never reduced it completely to a system of production relations. For him, the socio-economic formation has always been a type of society taken in the unity of all its aspects. He characterizes the system of production relations as the "skeleton" of the socio-economic formation, which is always clothed with the "flesh and blood" of other social relations. But this "skeleton" always contains the whole essence of a particular socio-economic formation.

Since the relations of production are objective, material, the whole system formed by them is correspondingly material. And this means that it functions and develops according to its own laws, independent of the consciousness and will of people living in the system of these relations. These laws are the laws of functioning and development of the socio-economic formation. The introduction of the concept of socio-economic formation, allowing for the first time to look at the evolution of society as a natural-historical process, made it possible to identify not only what is common between sociohistorical organisms, but at the same time what is repeated in their development.

All sociohistorical organisms belonging to the same formation, having as their basis the same system of production relations, must inevitably develop according to the same laws. No matter how different modern England and modern Spain, modern Italy and modern Japan may differ from each other, they are all bourgeois sociohistorical organisms, and their development is determined by the action of the same laws - the laws of capitalism.

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

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

If in historical reality a specific socio-economic formation exists only in socio-historical organisms as their common basis, then in theory this inner essence of individual societies appears in its pure form, as something independently existing, namely, as an ideal socio-historical organism of this type.

An example is Marx's Capital. This work examines the functioning and development of capitalist society, but not of any definite, concrete one - English, French, Italian, etc., but capitalist society in general. And the development of this ideal capitalism, a pure bourgeois socio-economic formation, is nothing more than a reproduction of an internal necessity, an objective law of the evolution of each individual capitalist society. All other formations appear in theory as ideal social organisms.

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

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

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

Speaking about the socio-economic formation, the authors of neither monographs nor textbooks have ever drawn a clear line between specific formations and formation in general. However, there is a difference, and it is significant. Each concrete social formation represents not only a type of society, but also a society of this type in general, a particular society (feudal society in general, capitalist society in general, etc.). The situation with the socio-economic structure in general is quite different. It is not a society in any sense of the word.

Our historians never understood this. In all monographs and in all textbooks on historical materialism, the structure of the formation has always been considered and its main elements have been listed: the basis, the superstructure, including social consciousness, etc. etc. to societies, then a formation in general will appear before us. But in fact, in this case, we will face not a formation in general, but society in general. Imagining that they were describing the structure of a formation in general, historians were actually drawing the structure of society in general, i.e., they were talking about the general thing that is inherent in all sociohistorical organisms without exception.

Any specific socio-economic formation appears in two guises: 1) it is a specific type of society and 2) it is also a society of this type in general. Therefore, the concept of a specific formation is included in two different series of concepts. One row: 1) the concept of a sociohistorical organism as a separate concrete society, 2) the concept of a particular formation as a society of a generally definite type, i.e., a special society, 3) the concept of society in general. Another series: 1) the concept of sociohistorical organisms as separate concrete societies, 2) the concept of specific formations as different types of sociohistorical organisms of society, and 3) the concept of a socio-economic formation in general as a type of sociohistorical organisms in general.

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

In all the works and textbooks, when the formation was defined as a society, and without indicating what kind of formation in question - a specific formation or a formation in general, it was never specified whether it was a separate society or a society in general. And often the authors, and even more so the readers, understood a formation as a separate society, which was completely absurd. And when some authors nevertheless tried to take into account that the formation is a type of society, it often turned out even worse. Here is an example from one textbook: “Each society is ... an integral organism, the so-called socio-economic formation, i.e., a certain historical type of society with its own mode of production, basis and superstructure.

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

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

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

3. Orthodox understanding of the change in socio-economic formations and its failure

In K. Marx's theory of socio-economic formations, each formation appears as a society of a certain type in general, and thus as a pure, ideal socio-historical organism of this type. Primitive society in general, Asiatic society in general, pure ancient society, etc. figure in this theory. Accordingly, the change of social formations appears in it as the transformation of an ideal socio-historical organism of one type into a pure socio-historical organism of another, higher type: ancient society in general into feudal society in general, of pure feudal society into pure capitalist society, etc. Accordingly, human society as a whole appears in theory as a society in general - as one single pure socio-historical organism, the stages of development of which are societies of a generally certain type: pure primitive , pure Asian, pure antique, pure feudal and pure capitalist.

But in historical reality, human society has never been one single socio-historical organism. It has always represented a vast array of sociohistorical organisms. And specific socio-economic formations also never existed in historical reality as sociohistorical organisms. Each formation has always existed only as that fundamental common thing that is inherent in all socio-historical organisms that have as their basis the same system of socio-economic relations.

And in itself there is nothing reprehensible in such a discrepancy between theory and reality. It always takes place in any science. After all, each of them takes the essence of phenomena in its pure form, and in this form the essence never exists in reality, because each of them considers necessity, regularity, law in its pure form, but there are no pure laws in the world.

Therefore, the most important thing in any science is what is commonly called the interpretation of a theory. It consists in revealing how necessity, which appears in theory in its pure form, manifests itself in reality. As applied to the theory of formations, the question is how a scheme that claims to reproduce the objective necessity of the development of human society as a whole, that is, of all existing and existing socio-historical organisms, is realized in history. Does it represent an ideal development model? everyone socio-historical organism, taken separately, or only all of them combined?

In our literature, the question of whether the Marxist scheme for the change of socio-economic formations is a mental reproduction of the evolution of each socio-historical organism, taken separately, or whether it expresses the internal objective logic of the development of only human society as a whole, but not the individual components of its sociors, has never been stated in any distinct form. This is largely due to the fact that Marxist theory lacked the concept of a socio-historical organism, and thus the concept of a system of socio-historical organisms. Accordingly, it never made a clear enough distinction between human society as a whole and society in general, did not analyze the difference between the formation as it exists in theory and the formation as it exists in reality, etc.

But if this question was not raised theoretically, then in practice it was nevertheless solved. In fact, it was believed that the Marxian scheme of development and change of socio-economic formations had to be realized in the evolution of each individual specific society, i.e., each socio-historical organism. As a result, world history appeared as a set of histories of many originally existing socio-historical organisms, each of which normally had to "go through" all socio-economic formations.

If not in all, then at least in some Historical works, this view was expressed with the utmost clarity. "TO. Marx and F. Engels, - we read in one of them, - studying world history, came to the conclusion that with all the diversity of social development in all countries there is a general, necessary and recurring trend: all countries go through the same stages. The most common features of these stages are expressed in the concept of "socio-economic formation". And further: “It follows from this concept that all peoples, regardless of the peculiarities of their historical development, inevitably go through basically the same formations.”

Thus, the change of socio-economic formations was conceived as occurring exclusively within socio-historical organisms. Accordingly, socio-economic formations acted primarily as stages of development not of human society as a whole, but of individual socio-historical organisms. The only reason to consider them as stages of world-historical development was given only by the fact that all or, at least, the majority of socio-historical organisms “passed through” them.

Of course, researchers who consciously or unconsciously adhered to such an understanding of history could not but see that there were facts that did not fit into their ideas. But they mainly paid attention only to those of these facts that could be interpreted as a "pass" by this or that "people" of this or that socio-economic formation, and explained them as an always possible and even inevitable deviation from the norm, caused by the confluence of certain specific historical circumstances.

The interpretation of the change of formations as a consistent change in the type of existing socio-historical organisms, to a certain extent, was in accordance with the facts of the history of Western Europe in modern times. The replacement of feudalism by capitalism took place here, as a rule, in the form of a qualitative transformation of existing socio-historical organisms. Qualitatively changing, turning from feudal to capitalist, socio-historical organisms at the same time were preserved as special units of historical development.

France, for example, having turned from feudal to bourgeois, continued to exist as France. The late feudal and bourgeois societies of France, despite all the differences between them, have something in common, they are successively replaced stages in the evolution of the French geosocial organism. The same could be observed in England, Spain, Portugal. However, already with Germany and Italy the situation was different: even in the era of late feudalism, neither German nor Italian socio-historical organisms existed.

If we take a look at world history as it was before late feudalism, then the whole of it will in any case appear not as a process of stage-by-stage change of a certain number of initially existing socio-historical organisms. World history has been a process of emergence, development and death of a huge variety of socio-historical organisms. The latter, therefore, coexisted not only in space, next to each other. They arose and perished, replaced each other, replaced each other, that is, they coexisted in time.

If in Western Europe XVI-XX centuries. If there was (and even then not always) a change in the types of socio-historical organisms while maintaining themselves as special units of historical development, then, for example, for the Ancient East, the opposite picture was characteristic: the emergence and disappearance of socio-historical organisms without changing their type. The newly emerged socio-historical organisms in their type, i.e. formation affiliation, did not differ in any way from the dead.

World history does not know of a single socio-historical organism that would "pass through" not only just all the formations, but at least three of them. On the other hand, we know many socio-historical organisms in the development of which there was no change of formations at all. They arose as socio-historical organisms of one specific type and disappeared without undergoing any changes in this respect. They arose, for example, as Asian and disappeared as Asian, appeared as ancient and perished as ancient.

I have already noted that the absence of the concept of a socio-historical organism in the Marxist theory of history was a serious obstacle to any clear formulation of the problem of interpreting Marx's scheme for the change of socio-economic formations. But at the same time, and to a large extent, it prevented us from realizing the discrepancy that existed between the orthodox interpretation of this scheme and historical reality.

When it was tacitly accepted that all societies should normally “go through” all formations, it was never specified exactly what meaning was put into the word “society” in this context. It could be understood as a socio-historical organism, but it could also be a system of socio-historical organisms and, finally, the entire historical sequence of socio-historical organisms that have been replaced in a given territory. It was this sequence that was most often meant when they tried to show that a given "country" had "passed through" all or almost all formations. And almost always it was this sequence that was meant when they used the words "regions", "oblasts", "zones".

A means of conscious, and more often unconscious disguise of the discrepancy between the orthodox understanding of the change of formations and real history was also the use of the word "people", and, of course, again without clarifying its meaning. For example, it was said as a matter of course that all peoples, without the slightest exception, “passed through” the primitive communal formation. At the same time, even such an undoubted fact was completely ignored that all modern ethnic communities (peoples) of Europe were formed only in a class society.

But all these, mostly unconscious, manipulations with the words "society", "people", "historical region", etc. did not change the essence of the matter. And it consisted in the fact that the orthodox version of the change in socio-economic formations was indisputably in clear contradiction with historical facts.

It was all the above facts that gave the opponents of Marxism a basis for declaring the materialist understanding of history as a purely speculative scheme, in striking contradiction with historical reality. Indeed, they believed, if socio-economic formations in the overwhelming majority of cases do not act as stages in the development of socio-historical organisms, then by the same token they by no means can be stages of world-historical development.

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

“The general result that I arrived at,” wrote K. Marx in his famous preface “On the Critique of Political Economy”, containing an exposition of the foundations of historical materialism, “and which later served as a guiding thread in my further research, can be briefly formulated as follows. In the social production of their life, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - relations of production, which correspond to a certain stage in the development of their productive forces. The totality of these production relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond ... At a certain stage of its development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing production relations, or - which is only the legal expression of the latter - with the property relations within which they have been developing until now. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into their fetters. Then comes the era of social revolution. With a change in the economic basis, a revolution takes place more or less rapidly in the entire vast superstructure ... No social formation perishes before all the productive forces for which it gives sufficient scope have developed, and new higher production relations never appear before the material conditions for their existence in the depths of the old society will ripen.

This statement of K. Marx can be understood in such a way that the change of social formations always occurs within society, and not only society in general, but each specific individual society. And he has many such statements. Outlining his views, V. I. Lenin wrote: “Each such system of production relations is, according to Marx’s theory, a special social organism that has special laws of its origin, functioning and transition to a higher form, transformation into another social organism.” In essence, speaking of social organisms, V.I. Lenin has in mind not so much real socio-historical organisms as socio-economic formations that really exist in the minds of researchers as social organisms, but, of course, ideal ones. However, he does not specify this anywhere. And as a result, his statement can be understood in such a way that each specific society of a new type arises as a result of the transformation of the socio-historical organism of the previous formational type.

But along with statements similar to the above, K. Marx also has others. Thus, in a letter to the editors of Otechestvennye Zapiski, he objects to N.K. Mikhailovsky’s attempt to turn his “historical sketch of the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe into a historical and philosophical theory of the universal path along which all peoples, no matter how nor were the historical conditions in which they find themselves, in order to ultimately arrive at that economic formation which, together with the greatest flourishing of the productive forces of social labor, ensures the fullest development of man. But this idea was not concretized by K. Marx, and it was practically not taken into account.

Outlined by K. Marx in the preface to the "Critique of Political Economy", the scheme of the change of formations is to a certain extent consistent with what we know about the transition from primitive society to the first class - Asian. But it does not work at all when we are trying to understand how the second class formation, the ancient one, arose. It was not at all that new productive forces had matured in the depths of Asiatic society, which became crowded within the framework of the old production relations, and that as a result a social revolution took place, as a result of which Asiatic society turned into ancient society. Nothing even remotely similar happened. No new productive forces have arisen in the depths of Asiatic society. Not a single Asian society, taken by itself, has been transformed into an ancient one. Antique societies appeared in a territory where societies of the Asian type either never existed at all, or they had long since disappeared, and these new class societies emerged from the pre-class societies that preceded them.

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

Soviet philosophers and historians, for the most part, took the path of denying the formational difference between ancient Eastern and ancient societies. As they argued, both ancient Eastern and ancient societies were equally slave-owning. The differences between them were only that some arose earlier, while others later. In the ancient societies that arose somewhat later, slavery acted in more developed forms than in the societies of the Ancient East. That, in fact, is all.

And those of our historians who did not want to put up with the position that the ancient Eastern and ancient societies belonged to the same formation, inevitably, most often without even realizing it, again and again resurrected the idea of ​​G. V. Plekhanov. As they argued, two parallel and independent lines of development proceed from primitive society, one of which leads to Asian society, and the other to ancient society.

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

An attempt to do this was made by some of our historians, who tried to comprehend the historical process in their own way. These were the same people who did not want to accept the thesis about the formational identity of the ancient Eastern and ancient societies. They proceeded from the fact that the society of the Germans was indisputably barbarian, that is, pre-class, and that it was from it that feudalism arose. From this they concluded that from primitive society there are not two, but three equal lines of development, one of which leads to Asian society, the other to ancient, and the third to feudal. In order to somehow harmonize this view with Marxism, the position was put forward that Asian, ancient and feudal societies are not independent formations and, in any case, not successively changing stages of world-historical development, but equal modifications of one and the same formations are secondary. Such an understanding was put forward at one time by the Sinologist L. S. Vasiliev and the Egyptologist I. A. Stuchevsky.

The idea of ​​one unified pre-capitalist class formation has become widespread in our literature. It was developed and defended by the Africanist Yu. M. Kobishchanov and the sinologist V. P. Ilyushechkin. The first called this single pre-capitalist class formation a large feudal formation, the second - a class society.

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

In reality, of course, this was, regardless of the desire and will of the supporters of such views, a departure from the view of the history of mankind as a single process that constitutes the essence of the theory of socio-economic formations. It is not for nothing that L. S. Vasiliev, who once argued in every possible way that the recognition of the multi-linearity of development does not in the slightest degree diverge from the Marxist view of history, later, when the forced imposition of historical materialism was over, acted as an ardent opponent of the theory of social economic formations and, in general, the materialistic understanding of history.

The recognition of the multilinearity of historical development, which some Russian historians came to back in the days of the formally undivided domination of Marxism, consistently carried out, inevitably leads to a denial of the unity of world history, to its pluralist understanding.

But at the same time, it is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that the seemingly purely unitary understanding of history outlined above, in fact, also, in the final analysis, turns into multi-linearism and the actual denial of the unity of history. After all, in essence, world history, in this understanding, appears as a simple sum of completely independent processes of development of individual socio-historical organisms that run in parallel. The unity of world history is thereby reduced only to the generality of the laws that determine the development of socio-historical organisms. Thus, before us are many lines of development, but only completely identical. This, in fact, is not so much unilinearity as multi-linearity.

Of course, there is a significant difference between such multilinearity and multilinearity in the usual sense. The first assumes that the development of all socio-historical organisms follows the same laws. The second assumes that the development of different societies can proceed in completely different ways, that there are completely different lines of development. Multilinearity in the usual sense is multilinearity. The first understanding presupposes the progressive development of all individual societies, and thus human society as a whole, the second excludes the progress of mankind.

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

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

4. Linear-stage and plural-cyclic approaches to history

The Marxist theory of socio-economic formations is one of the varieties of a broader approach to history. It consists in looking at world history as one single process of the progressive, ascending development of mankind. Such an understanding of history presupposes the existence of stages in the development of mankind as a whole. The unitary-stage approach arose long ago. It found its embodiment, for example, in dividing the history of mankind into such stages as savagery, barbarism and civilization (A. Ferguson and others), as well as in subdividing this history into hunting and gathering, pastoral (cattle breeding), agricultural and trading industrial periods (A. Turgot, A. Smith and others). The same approach found its expression in the first three, and then four world-historical epochs in the development of civilized mankind: ancient Eastern, ancient, medieval and modern (L. Bruni, F. Biondo, K. Koehler, etc.).

The flaw that I just spoke about was inherent not only in the orthodox version of the theory of socio-economic formations, but also in all the concepts mentioned above. Such a variant of a unitary-stage understanding of history should most accurately be called unitary-plural-stage. But this word is too clumsy. Since the words “linear” or “linear” are sometimes used to denote this view of history, I will call it linear-stage. It is precisely this understanding of development that is practically most often meant when one speaks of evolutionism in the historical and ethnological sciences.

As a kind of reaction to this kind of unitary-stage understanding of history, a completely different general approach to history arose. Its essence lies in the fact that humanity is divided into several completely autonomous entities, each of which has its own, absolutely independent history. Each of these historical formations arises, develops, and sooner or later inevitably perishes. The dead formations are being replaced by new ones that complete exactly the same cycle of development.

Due to the fact that each such historical formation starts everything from the beginning, it cannot introduce anything fundamentally new into history. It follows from this that all such formations are absolutely equal, equivalent. None of them in terms of development is neither lower nor higher than all the others. Each of these formations develops, and for the time being even progressively, but humanity as a whole does not evolve, much less progresses. There is an eternal rotation of many squirrel wheels.

It is not difficult to understand that, according to this view, there is neither human society as a whole, nor world history as a single process. Accordingly, there can be no question of the stages of development of human society as a whole, and thus of the epochs of world history. Therefore, this approach to history is pluralistic.

The pluralist understanding of history did not emerge today. J. A. Gobyno and G. Ruckert stand at its origins. The main provisions of historical pluralism were quite clearly formulated by N. Ya. Danilevsky, brought to the extreme limit by O. Spengler, to a large extent softened by A. J. Toynbee and, finally, acquired caricature forms in the works of L. N. Gumilyov. These thinkers named the historical formations they identified differently: civilizations (J. A. Gobineau, A. J. Toynbee), cultural-historical individuals (G. Ruckert), cultural-historical types (N. Ya. Danilevsky), cultures or great cultures (O. Spengler), ethnoi and superethnoi (L. N. Gumilyov). But this did not change the very essence of this understanding of history.

The own constructions of even the classics of the plurality-cyclic approach (to say nothing of their many admirers and epigones) were of no particular scientific value. But valuable was the criticism to which they subjected the linear-stage understanding of the historical process.

Before them, many thinkers in their philosophical and historical constructions proceeded from society in general, which acted for them as the only subject of history. Historical pluralists have shown that humanity is actually divided into several largely independent formations, that there is not one, but several subjects of the historical process, and thus, without realizing it, they switched their attention from society in general to human society as a whole.

To some extent, their work contributed to the awareness of the integrity of world history. All of them singled out as independent units of historical development not so much socio-historical organisms as their systems. And although they themselves were not engaged in identifying the links between the socio-historical organisms that form this or that particular system, such a question inevitably arose. Even when they, like O. Spengler, insisted on the absence of connections between the selected units of history, it still made one think about the relationship between them, oriented towards identifying “horizontal” connections.

The writings of historical pluralists not only drew attention to the connections between simultaneously existing separate societies and their systems, but forced a new look at the "vertical" connections in history. It became clear that they could by no means be reduced to relations between stages of development within certain individual societies, that history is discrete not only in space but also in time, that the subjects of the historical process arise and disappear.

It became clear that sociohistorical organisms most often did not transform from one type of society into another, but simply ceased to exist. Socio-historical organisms coexisted not only in space but also in time. And so the question naturally arises about the nature of the ties between the societies that have disappeared and the societies that have taken their place.

At the same time, historians faced the problem of cycles in history with particular urgency. Socio-historical organisms of the past indeed went through periods of prosperity and decline in their development, and often perished. And naturally the question arose as to how compatible the existence of such cycles is with the idea of ​​world history as a progressive, ascending process.

To date, the plural-cyclical approach to history (usually called “civilizational” in our country) has exhausted all its possibilities and has become a thing of the past. Attempts to revive it, which are now being made in our science, cannot lead to anything but embarrassment. Articles and speeches of our "civilizationists" clearly testify to this. In essence, they all represent a transfusion from empty to empty.

But even that version of the unitary-stage understanding of history, which was called linear-stage, is in conflict with historical reality. And this contradiction has not been overcome even in the latest unitary-stage concepts (neo-evolutionism in ethnology and sociology, the concepts of modernization and industrial and post-industrial society). All of them remain in principle linear-stadial.

5. Relay-formational approach to world history

At present, there is an urgent need for a new approach that would be unitary-stage, but at the same time take into account the entire complexity of the world-historical process, an approach that would not reduce the unity of history only to the generality of laws, but would imply an understanding of it as a single whole. The real unity of history is inseparable from its integrity.

Human society as a whole exists and develops not only in time but also in space. And the new approach should take into account not only the chronology of world history, but also its geography. It necessarily presupposes the historical mapping of the historical process. World history moves simultaneously in time and space. The new approach will have to capture this movement in both its temporal and spatial aspects.

And all this necessarily implies a deep study of not only "vertical", temporal, diachronic connections, but also "horizontal", spatial, synchronous ones. “Horizontal” connections are connections between simultaneously existing sociohistorical organisms. Such connections have always existed and exist, if not always between all, then at least between neighboring sociors. Regional systems of sociohistorical organisms have always existed and still exist, and by now a worldwide system has emerged. The connections between sociors and their systems are manifested in their mutual influence on each other. This interaction is expressed in various forms: raids, wars, trade, exchange of cultural achievements, etc.

One of the most important forms of inter-social interaction consists in such an impact of some sociohistorical organisms (or systems of sociohistorical organisms) on others, in which the latter are preserved as special units of historical development, but at the same time, under the influence of the former, they either undergo significant, long-lasting changes, or vice versa. lose the ability to develop further. This is intersocior induction, which can occur in different ways.

It cannot be said that “horizontal” connections have not been studied at all. They were even in the center of attention of supporters of such trends in ethnology, archeology, sociology, history as diffusionism, migrationism, the concept of dependence (dependent development), the world-system approach. But if the supporters of the linear-stage approach absolutized the “vertical” connections in history, neglecting the “horizontal”, then the advocates of a number of the above-mentioned trends, in contrast to them, absolutized the “horizontal” connections and paid obviously insufficient attention to the “vertical” ones. Therefore, neither one nor the other got a picture of the development of world history that would correspond to historical reality.

There can be only one way out of the situation: in the creation of an approach in which stages and inter-socioral induction would be synthesized. No general reasoning about stadiality can help in creating such a new approach. A fairly clear stadial typology of sociohistorical organisms should be taken as the basis. To date, only one of the existing stage typologies of society deserves attention - the historical-materialistic one.

This does not mean at all that it should be accepted in the form in which it now exists in the works of both the founders of Marxism and their numerous followers. An important feature put by K. Marx and F. Engels as the basis of typology is the socio-economic structure of a socio-historical organism. It is necessary to single out socio-economic types of socio-historical organisms.

The founders of the materialistic understanding of history singled out only the main types of society, which were simultaneously stages of world-historical development. These types were called socio-economic formations. But besides these basic types, there are non-basic socio-economic types, which I will call socio-economic paraformations (from the Greek. pair- about, near) and socio-economic proformations (from lat. pro- instead of). All socio-economic formations are on the highway of world-historical development. The situation is more complicated with paraformations and proformations. But for us in this case, the difference between socio-economic formations, paraformations and proformations is not essential. It is important that they all represent socio-economic types of socio-historical organisms.

Starting from a certain point, the most important feature of world history has been the uneven development of sociohistorical organisms and, accordingly, their systems. There was a time when all sociohistorical organisms belonged to the same type. This is the era of early primitive society. Then part of the societies turned into late primitive ones, while the rest continued to retain the same type. With the emergence of pre-class societies, societies of at least three different types began to exist simultaneously. With the transition to civilization, the first class sociohistorical organisms were added to several types of pre-class society, which belonged to the formation that K. Marx called Asian, and I prefer to call it political (from the Greek. palitia- state). With the emergence of ancient society, there arose class sociohistorical organisms of at least one more type.

I will not continue this series. An important conclusion is that throughout a significant part of world history, sociohistorical organisms of a new and older types simultaneously existed. As applied to modern history, people often spoke of advanced countries and peoples and of backward, or lagging behind, countries and peoples. In the XX century. the latter terms began to be regarded as offensive and replaced by others - "underdeveloped" and, finally, "developing" countries.

We need concepts that would be suitable for all eras. Sociohistorical organisms of the most advanced type for a particular era, I will call superior (from lat. super- over, over), and all the rest - inferior (from lat. infra- under). Of course, the difference between the two is relative. Sociors that were superior in one era may become inferior in another. Many (but not all) inferior organisms belong to types that were on the highway of world-historical development, but whose time has passed. With the advent of a higher main type, they turned into extra main ones.

Just as superior sociohistorical organisms can influence inferior ones, so the latter can influence the former. The process of influence of some sociors on others, which has significant consequences for their destinies, has already been called inter-socior induction above. In this case, we are primarily interested in the impact of superior sociohistorical organisms on inferior ones. I deliberately use the word "organism" in the plural here, because inferior organisms are usually influenced not by a single superior socior, but by their whole system. The influence of superior organisms and their systems on inferior organisms and their systems I will call superinduction.

Superinduction can result in the improvement of the inferior organism. In this case, this impact can be called progression. In the case of the opposite result, we can speak of regression. This impact can result in stagnation. This is stagnation. And, finally, the result of superinduction may be partial or complete destruction of the inferior socior - deconstruction. Most often, the process of superinduction includes all three first moments, usually with the predominance of one of them.

The concepts of superinduction have been created only in our time and in relation only to modern and recent history. These are some concepts of modernization (Europeanization, Westernization), as well as the theory of dependent development and world-systems. In the concepts of modernization, progressization comes to the fore, in the concepts of dependent development - stagnation. The classical world-systems approach tried to uncover the full complexity of the superinduction process. A peculiar assessment of modern superinduction is given in the concept of Eurasianism and in modern Islamic fundamentalism. In them, this process is characterized as regression or even deconstruction.

As applied to more distant times, the developed concepts of superinduction were not created. But this process was noticed by diffusionists and absolutized by hyperdiffusionists. The supporters of pan-Egyptism painted a picture of the “Egyptization” of the world, while the advocates of pan-Babylonism painted a picture of its “Babylonization”. Historians who stuck to the facts did not create this kind of concept. But they could not fail to notice the processes of superinduction. And if they did not develop special concepts of superinduction, then they introduced terms to designate specific processes of this kind that occurred in certain epochs. These are the terms "Orientalization" (in relation to archaic Greece and early Etruria), "Hellenization", "Romanization".

As a result of progression, the type of the inferior organism may change. In some cases, it can turn into a sociohistorical organism of the same type as those who act on it, i.e., rise to a higher stage of mainline development. This process of “pulling up” inferior organisms to the level of superior ones can be called superiorization. In the concepts of modernization, this option is meant. Societies lagging behind in their development (traditional, agrarian, premodern) turn into capitalist (industrial, modern).

However, this is not the only possibility. The other is that under the influence of superior sociors, inferior sociors can turn into sociohistorical organisms of a higher type than the original one, but this stage type does not lie on the highway, but on one of the side paths of historical development. This type is not mainline, but lateral (from lat. lateralis- lateral). I will call this process lateralization. Naturally, lateral types are not socio-economic formations, but paraformations.

If superiorization is taken into account, then the process of world history can be depicted as one in which a group of sociohistorical organisms develops, rises from one stage of development to another, higher one, and then “pulls” the rest of the sociors that have lagged behind in their development to the levels it has reached. There is an eternal center and an eternal periphery: But this does not provide a solution to the problem.

As has already been pointed out, there is not a single sociohistorical organism in whose development more than two formations would change. And there are many sociors within which the change of formations did not take place at all.

It can be assumed that when a group of superior organisms "pulled up" a certain number of inferior organisms to their level, the latter, in their subsequent development, were able to independently rise to a new, higher stage of development, while the former proved incapable of this and thus lagged behind. Now the former inferior organisms have become superior, and the former superior organisms have become inferior. In this case, the center of historical development moves, the former periphery becomes the center, and the former center turns into the periphery. With this option, there is a kind of transfer of the historical baton from one group of sociohistorical organisms to another.

All this brings the picture of the world historical process closer to historical reality. The fact that no change in more than two formations has been observed in the development of any sociohistorical organism does not in the least prevent the change of any number of them in the history of mankind as a whole. However, in this version, the change of socio-economic formations is conceived as occurring primarily within socio-historical organisms. But in real history, this is not always the case. Therefore, such a concept does not provide a complete solution to the problem.

But in addition to those discussed above, there is another development option. And under it, the system of superior sociohistorical organisms influences inferior sociors. But these latter, as a result of such influence, undergo more than a peculiar transformation. They do not change into organisms of the same type as those that affect them. There is no superimposition.

But the type of inferior organisms changes in this case. Inferior organisms turn into sociors of a type that, if approached purely externally, should be ranked among the lateral ones. This type of society is indeed not a formation, but a paraformation. But this society that has arisen as a result of progressization, i.e. progressized, is capable of further independent progress, and of a special kind. As a result of the action of already purely internal forces, this progressed society is transformed into a society of a new type. And this type of society is undoubtedly already on the highway of historical development. It represents a higher stage of social development, a higher socio-economic formation than that to which the superior sociohistorical organisms belonged, the impact of which served as an impetus for such development. This phenomenon can be called ultrasuperiorization.

If, as a result of superiorization, inferior sociohistorical organisms “pull up” to the level of superior sociors, then as a result of ultrasuperiorization, they “jump over” this level and reach an even higher one. A group of sociohistorical organisms appears that belong to a socio-economic formation higher than that to which the former superior sociors belonged. Now the former become superior, mainline, and the latter turn into inferior, extramain. There is a change in socio-economic formations, and it occurs not within certain socio-historical organisms, but on the scale of human society as a whole.

It can be said that in this case a change in the types of society also took place within sociohistorical organisms. Indeed, within the inferior sociohistorical organisms, one socio-economic type of society was replaced by another, and then another. But not a single one of the sociors who changed inside these was the formation that had previously dominated, which had previously been the highest. The replacement of this previously dominant formation by a new one, to which the leading role has now passed, did not take place within a single sociohistorical organism. It happened only on the scale of human society as a whole.

With such a change in socio-economic formations, we are faced with a genuine transfer of the historical baton from one group of sociohistorical organisms to another. The last sociors do not go through the stage at which the first ones were, they do not repeat their movement. Entering the highway of human history, they immediately begin to move from the place where the former superior sociohistorical organisms stopped. Ultrasuperiorization takes place when the existing superior sociohistorical organisms are themselves unable to transform into organisms of a higher type.

An example of ultra-superiorization is the emergence of ancient society. Its appearance was absolutely impossible without the influence of Middle Eastern sociohistorical organisms on the previously pre-class Greek sociohistorical organisms. This progressive influence has long been noted by historians who have called this process Orientalization. But as a result of Orientalization, the pre-class Greek Sociores did not become politarian societies like those that existed in the Middle East. From the pre-class Greek society arose first archaic Greece, and then classical Greece.

But besides the above, there is another type of ultrasuperiorization known to history. It took place when, on the one hand, geosocial organisms collided, and on the other, demosocial ones. There can be no question of joining the demosocior to the geosocior. It is only possible to add to the territory of the geosociore the territory where the demosocior lives. In this case, the demosocior, if he continues to remain on this territory, is included, introduced into the composition of the geosocior, continuing to be preserved as a special society. This is a demosocial introduction (lat. introduction– introduction). Both penetration and settlement of demosocciores on the territory of a geosociore is possible - demosoccioric infiltration (from lat. in- in and wed. lat. filteratio- straining). In both cases, only later, and not always and not soon, does the destruction of the demosocior and the direct entry of its members into the composition of the geosocior occur. This is geo-social assimilation, it is also demo-social annihilation.

Of particular interest is the invasion of the demosocciors into the territory of the geosocio with the subsequent establishment of their dominance over it. This is demosocior intervention, or democior intrusion (from lat. intrusus- pushed in). In this case, there is an imposition of demosocior organisms on geosocior organisms, the coexistence of two different types of sociors in the same territory. A situation is created when, on the same territory, some people live in a system of some social relations (primarily socio-economic), and the other in a system of completely different ones. It cannot last too long. Further development follows one of three options.

The first option: demosociors are destroyed, and their members are part of the geosocio, i.e., geosocior assimilation occurs, or demosocior annihilation. The second option: the geosociore is destroyed, and the people who made it up become members of demosocior organisms. This is demosocial assimilation, or geosocial annihilation.

In the third option, there is a synthesis of geo-social and demo-social socio-economic and other social structures. As a result of this synthesis, a new type of society emerges. This type of society is different both from the type of the original geo-socio and the type of the original demo-socio. Such a society may turn out to be capable of independent internal development, as a result of which it rises to a higher stage of mainline development than the original superior geosocial organism. As a consequence of such ultra-superiorization, there will be a change in socio-economic formations on the scale of human society as a whole. And again, this happens when the original superior organism is not able to turn into a society of a higher type. Such a process took place during the replacement of antiquity by the Middle Ages. Historians at the same time speak of a Romano-Germanic synthesis.

Ultrasuperiorization in both of its variants is a process of handing over the baton on the historical highway from superior sociohistorical organisms of the old type to superior sociohistorical organisms of a new, higher type. The discovery of ultrasuperiorization makes it possible to create a new version of the unitary-stage understanding of world history, which can be called unitary-relay-stage, or simply relay-stage.

Let me remind you that in application to the theory of socio-economic formations, the question was raised: is the scheme of changing formations an ideal model for the development of each socio-historical organism, taken separately, or does it express the internal need for the development of only all of them taken together, i.e. i.e. only the entire human society as a whole? As has already been shown, practically all Marxists were inclined towards the first answer, which made the theory of socio-economic formations one of the options for a linear-stage understanding of history.

But a second answer is also possible. In this case, socio-economic formations act primarily as stages in the development of human society as a whole. They can also be stages in the development of individual socio-historical organisms. But this is optional. The linear-stage understanding of the change in socio-economic formations is in conflict with historical reality. But besides it, another thing is also possible - relay race-stadial.

Of course, the relay-formational understanding of history is emerging only now. But the idea of ​​a historical relay race, and even a relay-stage approach to world history, was born quite a long time ago, although it never enjoyed wide recognition. This approach arose from the need to combine the ideas of the unity of mankind and the progressive nature of its history with the facts that testify to the division of mankind into separate entities that arise, flourish and perish.

For the first time this approach originated in the works of French thinkers of the 16th century. J. Boden and L. Leroy. In the 17th century it was adhered to by the Englishman J. Hakewill, in the 18th century. - Germans J. G. Herder and I. Kant, Frenchman K. F. Volney. This approach to history was deeply developed in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History by G. W. F. Hegel, and in the first half of the 19th century. was developed in the works of such Russian thinkers as P. Ya. Chaadaev, I. V. Kireevsky, V. F. Odoevsky, A. S. Khomyakov, A. I. Herzen, P. L. Lavrov. After that, he was almost completely forgotten.

Now it's time to revive it on a new basis. A new version of the relay-stage approach is the relay-formational understanding of world history. This is a modern form of the theory of socio-economic formations that meets the current level of development of historical, ethnological, sociological and other social sciences.

There is only one way to prove the correctness of such an approach to world history: to draw, guided by it, such a complete picture of world history, which would be more in line with the facts accumulated by historical science than all currently existing. Such an attempt was made by me in a whole series of works, to which I refer the reader.