He is the creator of the theory of socio-economic formations. Teaching K

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

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

The term "formation" (from Lat. Formatio - education) was originally used in geology (mainly) and in botany. It was introduced to science in the second half of the 18th century. by the German geologist GK Fuksel and then, at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, was widely used by his compatriot, geologist A.G. Berner. The interaction and change of economic formations were considered by K. Marx as applied to pre-capitalist formations in a separate working material, which lay aside from the study of Western capitalism.

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

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

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

This definition contains the following structural and dynamic elements:

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

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

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

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

By productive forces, Marxism understood:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The functioning and change of formations is subject to general laws that link them into a single process of the forward movement of mankind. At the same time, each formation has its own special laws of origin and development. Unity historical process does not mean that every social organism goes through all formations. Humanity as a whole passes through them, "catching up" to those countries and regions where the most progressive mode of production in this historical era has won and the corresponding superstructure forms have developed.

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

The materialistic theory of history by Karl Marx is because the decisive role in the development of society belongs not to consciousness, but to the being of people. Being determines consciousness, relationships between people, their behavior and views. The foundation of social life is social production. It represents both the process and the result of the interaction of productive forces (tools of labor and people) and production relations. The totality of production relations, which do not depend on the consciousness of people, constitutes the economic structure of society. It is called the basis. The legal and political superstructure rises above the base. This includes various forms of social consciousness, including religion and science. The basis is primary and the superstructure is secondary.

Definition 1

The formation approach is a socio-philosophical theory that examines the process of development of society from the standpoint of analyzing the processes of its material production, as well as social relations built around it.

Basic concepts of formation theory

The theory of socio-economic formations was developed by K. Marx and F. Engels, using materialist dialectics as a method of analyzing socio-historical processes. Unlike other theories of social development (Hegel's idealist dialectic, civilizational approaches) the formation theory is based on a completely materialistic understanding of both society itself and the historical process, as well as the criteria for its development, which become concretely measurable quantities.

Formation theory understands society as a set of social relations that arise between people in the process of their joint activities and are fixed in time, forming social institutions. At the same time, two global structural units are distinguished in society, to which all existing social relations are reduced:

• basis,
• superstructure.

The basis is a set of social relations and processes centered around material production. Marx and Engels rightly point out that no society can exist without material production, and its stopping would invariably lead to the death of society as such.

The superstructure is a set of political, religious and cultural institutions that consolidate a certain distribution of roles in society, corresponding to the level of development of the base. Marx and Engels distinguish two fundamental social strata in society, which are called classes - this is the class of the exploiters and the class of the exploited. The differences between these classes lie in their relation to the means of production. While the exploiting class has the right to own the means of production and receives surplus income through the use of this right, the exploited class is forced to exchange its labor for the opportunity to use the means of production, and produce material goods both for its own use and to provide for the exploiters.

Remark 1

It is through dialectics and the struggle of classes that the development of society takes place, its transition from more primitive socio-economic formations to more developed ones, and ultimately to communism.

Dialectics of production forces and relations

Driving force society, according to the formation theory, is the dialectical nature of material production, which is dictated by the dialectical relationship between the classes of society. The most important elements of material production are productive forces and relations.

The productive forces are the totality of all those labor efforts, skills and methods of production, technologies, as well as means of production, i.e. tools, thanks to which the process of material production is carried out directly. The productive forces are in constant development, thanks to the improvement of labor skills, the development of new techniques that are passed down from generation to generation, the introduction of technological innovations and scientific inventions.

Production relations include all those social relations that develop around material production, from labor relations themselves, management and administration processes, exchange and distribution of goods produced and, of course, property relations both in relation to the means of production and to the products produced. In contrast to the productive forces, relations are prone to conservation, i.e. having formed at a certain moment, they support the resulting social system without taking into account and even in spite of the development of productive forces.

This contradiction is the source of social transformations in society. When the development of the productive forces reaches its limit within the framework of a certain socio-economic formation, social, class conflicts, caused by the conservatism of production relations, become aggravated in society. As a result, society undergoes revolutionary changes during which the existing superstructure, primarily the political system, is completely dismantled and a new one arises in its place, consolidating a new distribution of productive forces and relations. The new formation inherits certain features of the old one, and also lays down the features of future formations. Within its framework, the productive forces continue to grow within the margin of safety of the existing system.

Formations

Definition 2

A formation is a specific type of society that exists in a specific historical period and is characterized by a specific mode of production.

Within the framework of the theory, Marx identified five main formations:

• primitive,
• slave-owning,
• feudal,
• capitalist,
• communist.

Primitive communal and communist formations are classified by Marx as non-antagonistic - they lack the class division of society into exploiters and exploited. At the primitive stage, each member of the tribe equally participates in the production process, is not alienated from the products of his labor, and their distribution is carried out according to a fair principle. However, with the improvement of labor technology, tools of labor, as well as the numerical growth of the tribe, the expansion of the zone of its geographical habitat and contacts with other tribes, the amount of goods produced begins to exceed the tribe's own needs. As a result, the processes of stratification begin within the tribe, the transformation of the clan community into a neighboring one, in addition, the tribe can allow to feed additional workers, for example, slaves captured during the war.

In the slave formation there are already classes - slaves and slaves, but over time, the ratio of the costs of maintaining slaves and the productivity of their labor leads to the fact that the labor of personally free peasants becomes more profitable. Feudal societies are being formed on the rubble of slave-owning states. However, the development of science, the introduction of machine methods of production, the expansion of the geography of the existence of societies entail new changes. The land ceases to be the main and only means of production, in its place comes capital, which is concentrated in the hands of the new class. In the course of bourgeois revolutions, the feudal ones are replaced by capitalist formations.

To the 180th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx

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 scientists, but also by the largest Western philosophers and sociologists R. Aron and E. Fromm, who did not consider themselves Marxists, but highly appreciated the theoretical legacy of the great thinker.

Yu. I. SEMENOV

MARKSOVA THEORY OF SOCIAL-ECONOMIC FORMATIONS AND MODERNITY

1. Center and periphery of the materialistic understanding of history

The greatest discovery of K. Marx was the materialist understanding of history he created in collaboration with F. Engels. Its main provisions remain in force now.

In the philosophy and methodology of scientific knowledge, the view is now widespread, according to which each scientific theory consists, firstly, of the central core, and secondly, of the surrounding periphery. Revealing the inconsistency of at least one idea included in 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. Refuting them and replacing them with 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 rightfully be called central.

The first proposition of historical materialism is that necessary condition human existence is the production of material goods. Material production is the basis of all human activity.

The second position is that production is always social in nature and always takes place in a certain 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.

The 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 different social forms. Thus, there are several types or forms of social production. These types of social production have been called modes of production. Each mode of production is production taken in a specific social form.

The existence of slave-owning, feudal and capitalist modes of production is essentially recognized now by almost all scientists, including those who do not share the Marxist point of view and do not use the term "mode of production". The slave-owning, feudal and capitalist modes of production are not only types of social production, but also the stages of its development. After all, there is no doubt that the rudiments of capitalism appear only in the XY-KHSU centuries, that it was preceded by feudalism, which took shape, at the earliest, only in the UG-GKH centuries, and that the flourishing of ancient society was associated with the widespread use of slaves in production. and the existence of a continuity between the ancient, feudal and capitalist economic systems.

the question awaits: why in one epoch one system of economic relations prevailed, in another - another, in a third - a third.

The industrial revolution was going on in front of K. Marx and F. Engels. And where the machine industry penetrated, feudal relations inevitably collapsed and capitalist relations were established. And to the question formulated above, the answer naturally suggested itself: the nature of economic (production) relations is determined by the level of development of social forces that create a social product, that is, the productive forces of society. The development of the productive forces lies at the heart of the change in the systems of economic relations, and thereby the main modes of production. This is the fourth proposition of historical materialism.

As a result, not only a solid foundation was laid under the long-established conviction of economists in 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 thus their actions.

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

With the discovery of social matter, materialism was extended to the phenomena of social life, became philosophical teaching, equally related to nature and society. It is precisely such a comprehensive, completed to the brim material

realism and received the name dialectical. Thus, the idea that dialectical materialism was first created, and then it was extended to society, is deeply mistaken. On the contrary, only when a materialist understanding of history was created did materialism become dialectical, but not earlier. The essence of the new Marxian materialism is in the materialist understanding of history.

According to the materialist understanding of history, the system of economic (production) relations is the basis, the basis of any particular individual society. And it was natural to put the nature of their economic structure as the basis for the classification of individual specific societies, their division into types. Societies based on 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, distinguished on the basis of the socio-economic structure, are called socio-economic formations. There are as many of them as there are basic production methods.

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 simultaneously stages of world-historical development. This is the sixth position of the 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 basic, and how many socio-economic formations exist, in what order and how they replace each other, refer to the peripheral part of the materialist understanding of history.

The scheme of the change of socio-economic formations created by K. Marx and F. Engels was based on the periodization that had been established by that time in historical science world history, in which three epochs were originally distinguished (antique, medieval, new), and later the ancient era of the Ancient East was added to them as the preceding antique era. With each of these world-historical epochs, the founders of Marxism associated a certain socio-economic formation. Hardly need to be quoted famous saying K. Marx on the Asian, ancient, feudal and bourgeois modes of production1. Continuing to develop their scheme, K. Marx and F. Engels in the future, 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 the primitive communal, or primitive communist ... According to the concept of the present and future of humanity developed by them, a communist socio-economic formation should replace the capitalist society. This is how the scheme of human development arose, in which five already existing and partly continuing to exist formations appear: primitive communist, Asian, ancient, feudal and bourgeois and one more, which does not yet exist, but which, according to the founders of Marxism, should inevitably arise - communist.

When one or another truly scientific theory is created, it becomes relatively independent in relation to its own creators. Therefore, not all ideas, even of its creators, not to mention their followers, which are directly related to the problems posed and solved by this theory, can be considered as constituent aspects of this theory. So, for example, F. Engels once put forward the position that in the early stages of human development, social orders were determined not so much by the production of material

1Marx K. To the criticism of political economy // K. Marx and F. Engels. Op. Izya. 2nd. Vol. 13, p. 7.

benefits, how much is the production of the person himself (child production) 2. And although this position was put forward by one of the creators of the materialistic understanding of history, it cannot be regarded as entering not only the central core, but also the peripheral part of this theory. It is incompatible with the basic tenets of historical materialism. This was pointed out in due time by G. Kunov3. But the main thing is that it is false.

K. Marx and F. Engels spoke on a variety of issues. Karl Marx had a definite system of views on Eastern (Asian), ancient and feudal societies, and F. Engels - on primitive ones. But their concepts of primitiveness, antiquity, etc., are not included as constituent elements (even peripheral ones) neither in the materialist understanding of history, nor in Marxism as a whole. And the obsolescence and even outright erroneousness of certain ideas of K. Marx and F. Engels about primitiveness, antiquity, religion, art, etc., in no way can testify to the inconsistency of the materialist understanding of history. Even the revelation of the incorrectness of certain ideas of Marx included in his theory of the capitalist economy, 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 materialist understanding of history was criticized. In the USSR, such criticism began somewhere in 1989 and acquired a landslide character after August 1991. Actually, it is only a stretch to call all this criticism. It was a real persecution. And they began to deal with historical materialism in the same ways that it was previously defended. Historians in Soviet times they said: whoever is against the materialist understanding of history is not a Soviet person. The arguments of the "democrats" were no less pro

2Engels F. The origin of the family, private property and the state // Ibid. T. 21.S. 26.

ZKunov G. Marx's theory of the historical process, society and state. T. 2.M.-L., 1930.S. 121-124.

hundred: 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, has not been refuted. Just as a matter of course they talked about its complete scientific inconsistency. And the few who nevertheless tried to refute it, acted according to a well-oiled scheme: attributing deliberate nonsense to historical materialism, they proved that it was nonsense, and triumphed in victory. The offensive against the materialist understanding of history that unfolded after August 1991 was met with sympathy by many historians. Some of them even got actively involved in the struggle. One of the reasons for the dislike of a considerable number of specialists towards historical materialism was that it had been forced upon them earlier. 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) order in our country, degenerated: from a harmonious system of scientific views it turned into a set of stamped phrases used in quality of spells and slogans. Real Marxism has been replaced by the semblance of Marxism - pseudo-Marxism. This affected all parts of Marxism, not excluding the materialist 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 re-cut” 4.

At the same time, not only did the actual propositions of the materialist understanding of history turn into dead schemes, but theses that did not follow from historical materialism were presented as immutable Marxist truths. Suffice it to give an example. We've had a long time

4Engels F. Letter to P. Ernst June 5, 1890 // K. Marx and F. Engels. Op. Ed. 2nd. Vol. 37, p. 351.

it was argued that Marxism teaches that the first class society can only be slave-owning and no other. It is a fact that the first class societies were the ancient Eastern ones. This led to the conclusion that these societies were slave-owning. Anyone who thought otherwise was automatically declared anti-Marxists. In the societies of the Ancient East, there were indeed slaves, although their exploitation was never the leading form. This allowed historians to at least somehow substantiate the position that these societies belong to the slave-owning formation. The situation was worse when there were no slaves in the societies that were supposed to be slave-owning. Then the slaves were declared such direct producers that they were not in any way, and the society was characterized as early slave-owning.

Historical materialism was considered as a method that allows, even before the beginning of the study of a society, to establish what will be found in it by the researcher. It was difficult to come up with great stupidity. In reality, the materialistic understanding of history does not precede the results of research, it only indicates how to look for 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 a template, under which the facts were adjusted, as it was for a long time, into a genuine method historical research it is enough to return to the origins, to restore in rights everything that was once created by K. Marx and F. Engels. The materialistic understanding of history needs a serious renewal, 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 have 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, from the large number of problems of historical materialism that need to be worked out, 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 the main meanings of the word "society" were not identified and theoretically developed in it. And this word in the scientific language has at least five such meanings. The first meaning is a concrete separate society, which is a relatively independent unit of historical development. Society in this sense, I will call the socio-historical (socio-historical) organism, or abbreviated socior.

The second meaning is a spatially limited system of socio-historical organisms, or sociological system. The third meaning is all the ever existing and now existing socio-historical organisms taken together - human society as a whole. The fourth meaning is society in general, regardless of any specific forms of its real existence. The fifth meaning is a society in general of a certain type (a special society or a type of society), for example, a feudal society or an industrial society5.

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 the other, more complex subjects of it are composed - sociological systems different levels... Each of the sociological systems of any hierarchical level was also a subject of the historical process. The highest, ultimate subject of the historical process is human society as a whole.

5 For details, see: Semenov Yu.I. Clio's Secrets. Concise introduction to the philosophy of history. M., 1996.

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

The first type is socio-historical organisms, which are unions of people, which are organized according to the principle of personal membership, primarily kinship. Each such associate is inseparable from its personnel and is capable of moving from one territory to another without losing its identity. I will call such societies demosocial organisms (demosociors). They are characteristic of the pre-class era of human history. Examples include 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 they occupy. the earth's surface... 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 this kind of society geosocial organisms (geosociors). They are characteristic of a class society. They are usually referred to as states or countries6.

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

The absence of the concept of a sociohistorical organism in the categorical apparatus of the Marxist theory of history inevitably hindered the understanding of the category of socio-economic

bFor more details see ibid.

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

Each specific socio-economic formation is a certain type of society, distinguished on the basis of the socio-economic structure. This means that a specific socio-economic formation is nothing more than something common that is inherent in 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 sociohistorical organism belonging to one or another socio-economic formation and this formation itself is the ratio of the individual and the general.

The problem of the general and the particular belongs to the most important problems of philosophy, and disputes around it have been fought throughout the history of this area of ​​human knowledge. Since the Middle Ages, two main directions in solving this issue have received the names of nominalism and realism. According to the views of nominalists, in the objective world, only the separate exists. The general is either completely absent, or it exists only in consciousness, is a mental human construction.

Realists defended a different point of view. They believed that the general exists realistically, outside and independently of human consciousness and forms a special world, different from the sensible world.

individual phenomena. This special world of the general is spiritual in nature, ideal and is primary in relation to the world of individual things.

There is a grain of truth in each of these two points of view, but both are wrong. For scientists, the existence in the objective world of laws, laws, essences, and necessity is undoubted. 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 separate exists. And this otherness of the being of the general does not at all consist in the fact that it forms a special world opposed to the world of the separate. There is no particular world in common. The general does not exist by itself, not independently, but only in the separate and through the separate. On the other hand, the separate does not exist without the common.

Thus, in the world there are two different kinds objective existence: one species - independent existence, as there is a separate, 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 to denote these two different forms of objective existence. Sometimes, however, they say that the separate exists as such, while the general, in reality, does not exist as such. In what follows, I will designate independent existence as self-existence, as self-being, and existence in the other and through the other as other-existence, or as other-being.

To know the general (essence, law, etc.), it is necessary to “extract” it from the separate, “cleanse” it from the separate, present it in a “pure” form, that is, in such a way in which it can exist only in thinking. The process of “extracting” the general from the separate, in which it exists in reality, 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, the non-existent, the general appears as self-existent, as separate. But this identity is not real, but

perfect. Here we have before us the separate, but not the real separate, but the ideal.

After this excursion into the theory of knowledge, let us return to the problem of formation. Since each specific socio-economic formation is common, it can exist and always exists in real world only in individual societies, sociohistorical organisms, and as their deep common basis, their inner essence and thus 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 it unites all these social organisms, determines their belonging to one type, first of all, of course, the presence in all of them of the same system of production relations. Everything else that brings them together is derived from this fundamental commonality. That is why V. I. Lenin repeatedly defined the socio-economic formation as an aggregate or system of certain production relations. However, at the same time, he never reduced it completely to the 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 this or that socio-economic formation7.

Since production relations are objective, material, the entire system formed by them is also material. 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 the functioning and development of a socio-economic formation. Introduction of the concept of social

7 Lenin V. I. What are “friends of the people” and how they fight against the social democrats // Poln. collection Op. T. 1.S. 138-139, 165.

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 the commonality between sociohistorical organisms, but at the same time repeating in their development.

All sociohistorical organisms belonging to the same formation, based on 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 differ from each other, they are all bourgeois socio-historical organisms, and their development is determined by the operation 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 this problem.

The only way that can lead to the creation of a theory of any formation is to identify that essential, common, that is manifested in the development of all socio-historical organisms of this type. It is quite understandable that it is impossible to reveal the general in phenomena without being distracted from the differences between them. It is possible to reveal the internal objective necessity of any real process only by freeing it from the concrete historical form in which it manifested itself, only by presenting this process in a "pure" form, in a logical form, that is, such as it can exist only in theoretical consciousness.

If in historical reality a specific socio-economic formation exists only in sociohistorical organisms as their common basis, then in theory this inner essence of individual societies appears in pure

form, as something independently existing, namely, as an ideal sociohistorical organism of this type.

An example is Marx's Capital. This work examines the functioning and development of capitalist society, but not some specific, concrete - 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 internal necessity, the objective laws of the evolution of each individual capitalist society. All other formations act in theory as ideal social organisms.

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

Each specific formation is in a certain relation 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 a given type, each specific formation acts as a general one. In relation to society in general, a concrete formation appears as a general of a lower level, that is, as a special one, as a specific type of society in general, as a special society.

Speaking about the socio-economic formation, the authors of neither monographs nor textbooks have never drawn a clear line between specific formations and the formation in general. Meanwhile, the difference exists, and it is significant. Each specific social formation is not only a type of society, but also a society of a given type in general, a special society (feudal society in general, capitalist society in general, etc.). The situation is completely different with the socio-economic formation in general. It is not a society in any sense of the word.

Our investigators never understood this. In all monographs and in all textbooks on historical materialism, the structure of the formation was always considered and its main elements were enumerated: the basis, the superstructure, including social consciousness, etc. and so on to societies, then we will see a formation in general. But in fact, in this case, it is not the formation in general, but the society in general that will appear before us. Imagining that they were describing the structure of a formation in general, the historians in fact painted the structure of society in general, that is, they talked about the general that is inherent in all socio-historical organisms without exception.

Any concrete socio-economic formation appears in two hypostases: 1) it is a specific type of society and 2) it is a society in general of this type. Therefore, the concept of a particular 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 particular formation as a society in general of a certain type, i.e., a special society, 3) the concept of society in general. Other

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 what is common that is inherent in all specific socio-economic formations, regardless of their specific characteristics, namely, that they are all types, distinguished on the basis of the socio-economic structure.

In all works and textbooks, when a formation was defined as a society, and without specifying what kind of formation we are talking about - a specific formation or a formation in general, it was never specified whether we are talking about a separate society or about society in general. And quite often both the authors, and even more so the readers understood a separate society as a formation, which was a complete absurdity. And when some authors nevertheless tried to take into account that a 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, that is, a certain historical type of society with its own mode of production, basis and superstructure" 8.

As a reaction to such an interpretation of socio-economic formations, a denial of their real existence arose. But it was not only due to the incredible confusion that existed in our literature on the question of formations. The matter was more complicated. As already indicated, in theory, socio-economic formations exist as ideal sociohistorical organisms. Not finding in

8Foundations of Marxism-Leninism: Textbook. M., 1959.S. 128.

historical reality of such formations, some of our historians, and behind them some historians came to the conclusion that the formations do not really exist at all, that they are only logical, theoretical constructions.

They were unable to understand that socio-economic formations also exist in historical reality, but differently than in theory, not as ideal sociohistorical organisms of one type or another, but as an objective general in real sociohistorical organisms of one type or another. For them, being was reduced only to self-being. They, like all nominalists in general, did not take into account otherness, and socio-economic formations, as already indicated, do not have their own identity. They do not self-exist, but they do not exist.

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

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

In the theory of socio-economic formations of K. Marx, each formation appears as a society in general of a certain type and thus as a pure, ideal socio-historical organism of a given type. This theory features primitive society in general, Asian society in general, pure ancient society, etc. 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 generally in a feudal society in general, a pure feudal

9See, for example, A. Ya. Gurevich. On the discussion of precapitalist formations: formation and way of life // Problems of Philosophy. 1968. No. 2. S. 118-119; Izraitel V. Ya. Problems of the formation analysis of social development. Gorky, 1975.S. 16.

a distant society into a pure capitalist society, etc. Accordingly, human society as a whole appears in theory as society in general - as one single pure socio-historical organism, the stages of development of which are societies in general of a 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 huge variety of sociohistorical organisms. And concrete socio-economic formations have never existed in historical reality as sociohistorical organisms either. Each formation has always existed only as that fundamental common, which is inherent in all socio-historical organisms, based on the same system of socio-economic relations.

And in itself such a discrepancy between theory and reality is nothing reprehensible. 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 pure laws do not exist 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 the necessity, which is purely theoretical in theory, 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, all existing and existing socio-historical organisms, is realized in history. Does it represent an ideal model for the development of each socio-historical organism taken separately, or just all of them taken together?

In our literature, the question of whether the Marxist scheme of the change of socio-economic formations represents 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 constituent sociors, it was never put 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, the distinction between human society as a whole and society in general was never drawn in it in a sufficiently clear form, the difference between a formation as it exists in theory and a formation as it exists in reality, etc., was not analyzed.

But if this question was not posed theoretically, then in practice it was nevertheless resolved. 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 concrete society, that is, each socio-historical organism. As a result, world history appeared as a set of histories of a multitude of originally existed socio-historical organisms, each of which normally had to "pass" all socio-economic formations.

If not in all, then at least in some of the works of Isthma 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 universal, necessary and recurring tendency: all countries go through the same stages. The most common features of these stages are expressed in the concept of "socio-economic formation" 10. And further: “From this concept it follows

10Popov P. V., Sychev S. V. Methodological functions of the concept of "socio-economic formation" // Methodological analysis of some philosophical categories. M., 1976.S. 93.

It seems that all peoples, regardless of the peculiarities of their historical development, inevitably go through basically the same formations ”11.

Thus, the change in 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 basis for considering them as stages of world-historical development was given only by the fact that they were "passed" by all or, at least, the majority of socio-historical organisms.

Of course, researchers who consciously or unconsciously adhered to such an understanding of history could not help 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 always, a possible and even inevitable deviation from the norm caused by the coincidence certain specific historical circumstances.

The interpretation of the change of formations as a sequential 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 the existing socio-historical organisms. While 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 society of France, despite all the differences between them, have in common, are consistent

11 Ibid. P. 95.

by the completely changed stages of 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 Germanic nor Italian socio-historical organisms existed.

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

If in Western Europe XVI-XX centuries. a change in the types of socio-historical organisms was observed (and even then not always) while preserving them 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, that is, formational affiliation, did not differ in any way from the dead.

World history does not know a single socio-historical organism that would “pass” not only all formations, but at least three of them. But 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 Asiatic and disappeared as Asiatic, appeared as antique and died as antique.

I have already noted that the absence in the Marxist theory of history of the concept of a socio-historical organism was

a serious obstacle to any clear statement of the problem of interpreting the Marxian scheme of changing socio-economic formations. But it at the same time and to a large extent prevented one 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 was possible to understand by it a socio-historical organism, but it was also possible to understand a system of socio-historical organisms and, finally, the entire historical sequence of socio-historical organisms that have changed in a given territory. It was this sequence that was most often meant when they tried to show that a given “country” “went through” all or almost all formations. And almost always this sequence was implied when the words "regions", "regions", "zones" were used.

The use of the word "people" was also a means of consciously, and more often unconsciously, masking the discrepancy between the orthodox understanding of the change of formations and real history, and, of course, again without specifying its meaning. For example, as a matter of course they said that all peoples, without the slightest exception, "passed" the primitive communal formation. At the same time, at least such an undoubted fact was completely ignored that all modern ethnic communities (peoples) of Europe developed only in a class society.

But all these, most often 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 the basis for declaring materialistic

the understanding of history by a purely speculative scheme, which is in striking contradiction with historical reality. Indeed, they argued, if socio-economic formations in the overwhelming majority of cases do not act as stages of development of socio-historical organisms, then by the same token they can in no way 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. There is no doubt that the classics of Marxism have such statements that admit just such, and not any other interpretation.

“The general result that I have arrived at,” wrote K. Marx in his famous preface “To the Critique of Political Economy,” containing an exposition of the foundations of historical materialism, “and which then served as a guiding thread in my further research, can be briefly formulated as follows. In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain, necessary, relations that do not depend on their will - relations of production that correspond to a certain stage in the development of their productive forces. The totality of these relations of production 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 their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or what is only the legal expression of the latter - with the property relations, within which they have developed so far. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into their fetters. Then the era of social revolution begins. With a change in the economic basis, a revolution occurs more or less rapidly in the entire enormous overwhelming

construction ... Not a single social formation perishes before all the productive forces develop, for which it gives enough room, and new higher production relations never appear before the material conditions of their existence mature in the depths of the old society ”12.

This statement of Karl Marx can be understood in such a way that the change of social formations always takes place within society, and not only in society in general, but in each specific individual society. And he has a lot of such statements. Explaining his views, VI 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 socioeconomic formations that really exist in the minds of researchers as social organisms, but, of course, are ideal. However, he does not specify this anywhere. As a result, his statement can be understood in such a way that each concrete 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 has others. Thus, in a letter to the editorial board of Otechestvennye zapiski, he objects to N.K. Mikhailovsky's attempt to transform his "historical sketch of the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe into a historical and philosophical theory of a universal path along which all peoples are fatally doomed to go nor were the historical conditions in which they find themselves - in order to ultimately arrive at the economic formation that ensures, together with the greatest flourishing of production,

12Marks K. Decree. slave. S. 6-7.

13 Lenin V.I.Poly. collection Op. T. 1.P. 429.

strong forces of social labor and the most complete development of man ”14. But this idea was not concretized by K. Marx, and it was practically not taken into account.

The scheme of the change of formations sketched by K. Marx in the preface to "To the Critique of Political Economy" 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 try to understand how the second class formation arose - the ancient one. It was not at all the case that in the depths of Asian society, new productive forces ripened, which became cramped within the framework of the old production relations, and that as a result a social revolution took place, as a result of which Asian society turned into antique. Nothing even remotely similar happened. No new productive forces emerged in the bowels of Asian society. Not a single Asian society, taken by itself, was transformed into an ancient one. Ancient societies appeared on the territory where societies of the Asian type either never existed at all, or they have long disappeared, and these new class societies arose from the pre-class societies that preceded them.

One of the first, if not the first of the Marxists to try 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 consecutive phases of development, but two parallel existing types of society. Both of these options grew out of a primitive society to the same extent, and they owe their difference to the peculiarities of the geographic environment15.

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 slaveholding to the same extent. The differences between them were only in the fact that some arose earlier, and others later. In the ancient societies that arose somewhat later, slavery

14 Marx K. and Engels F. Soch. Ed. 2nd. T. 19.P. 120.

15Plekhanov G.V. The main questions of Marxism // Selected philosophical works. T. 3.M., 1957.S. 164-165.

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 proposition that ancient Eastern and ancient societies belonged to the same formation, inevitably, themselves most often without even realizing it, resurrected the idea of ​​G.V. Plekhanov again and again. As they argued, two parallel and independent lines of development go from a primitive society, one of which leads to an Asian society, and the other to an ancient one.

The situation was not much better with the application of the Marx scheme of the change of formations to the transition from the ancient society to the feudal one. The last centuries the existence of ancient society is characterized not by the rise of the productive forces, but, on the contrary, by their continuous decline. This was fully acknowledged by F. Engels. "General impoverishment, the decline of trade, crafts and art, population decline, desolation of cities, the return of agriculture to a lower level - such, - he wrote, - was the end result of Roman world domination" 16. As he repeatedly emphasized, the ancient society had reached a "hopeless impasse". Only the Germans opened the way out of this impasse, who, having crushed the Western Roman Empire, introduced a new method of production - the feudal one. And they could do it because they were barbarians17. But, having written all this, F. Engels did not agree in any way what was said with the theory of socio-economic formations.

An attempt to do this was undertaken by some of our historians who tried to interpret 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 ancient Eastern and ancient societies. They proceeded from the fact that German society was indisputably barbaric, that is, pre-class, and that it was from it that feudalism arose. From this they concluded that not two, but three equal lines of development go from a primitive society, one of which leads to an Asian society, the other -

16Engels F. From the preparatory works for "Anti-Duhring" // K. Marx and F. Engels. Op. Ed. 2nd. T. 20.P. 643.

17 Engels F. The origin of the family, private property and the state. S. 148-155.

to the ancient, and the third to the feudal. In order to somehow reconcile 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 the formation is secondary. Such an understanding was put forward at one time by the Sinologist L. S. Vasiliev and the Egyptologist I. A. Stuchevsky18.

The idea of ​​one single pre-capitalist class formation has become widespread in our literature. It was developed and defended by both the Africanist Yu. M. Kobishchanov19 and the Sinologist V.P. Ilyushechkin20. The first called this single pre-capitalist class formation a large feudal formation, the second called a class-class society.

The idea of ​​one pre-capitalist class formation was usually combined, either explicitly or implicitly, with the idea of ​​a multi-linear development. But these ideas could exist separately. Since all attempts to find in the development of the countries of the East in the period from the US to. n. e. until the middle of the 19th century. n. e. the ancient, feudal and capitalist stages ended in collapse, then a number of scientists concluded that in the case of the change of slavery to feudalism, and the latter to capitalism, we are not dealing with a general pattern, but only with the Western European line of evolution, and that the development of mankind is not one-line, but multi-line 21. Of course, at that time all researchers who adhered to such views strove (some sincerely, and some not very much) to prove that the recognition of the multilinearity of development is fully consistent with Marxism.

18Vasiliev L.S., Stuchevsky I.A.Three models of the emergence of the evolution of precapitalist societies // Questions of history. 1966. No. 5.

19Kobishchanov Yu.M. Feudalism, slavery and the Asian mode of production // General and special in the historical development of the East. M., 1966, and other works.

20Ilyushechkin V.P. The system of non-economic coercion and the problem of the second main stage of social evolution. M., 1970; He's the same. The system and structure of pre-bourgeois private property exploitation. Issue 1-2. M., 1980; He's the same. Estates-class society in the history of China. M., 1986; He's the same. Exploitation and private property in co-like class societies. M., 1990, and other works.

21 See, for example, L.V. Danilova. Discussion problems of the theory of precapitalist societies // Problems of the history of precapitalist societies. Book. I. M., 1968.

In reality, of course, it 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, which constitutes the essence of the theory of socio-economic formations. It is not for nothing that L. S. Vasiliev, who at one time in every possible way argued that the recognition of the multilinearity of development did not in the least diverge from the Marxist view of history, later, when the forced imposition of historical materialism was done away with, came out as an ardent opponent of the theory of social economic formations and, in general, the materialistic understanding of history22.

The recognition of the multilinearity of historical development, which some Russian historians came to even during the time of the formally undivided domination of Marxism, consistently carried out, inevitably leads to the 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 outwardly seemingly purely Unitarian understanding of history, as stated above, in fact, too, ultimately turns into a multi-linearity and an actual denial of the unity of history. After all, in essence, world history with this understanding, it appears as a simple sum of parallel completely independent processes of development of individual socio-historical organisms. The unity of world history is thus reduced only to the generality of laws that determine the development of socio-historical organisms. Thus, before us there are many lines of development, but only completely identical. This, in fact, is not so much one-linearity as multi-uniformity.

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 go completely differently,

22 See, for example: Civilizations in the "third" world ("round table") // Vostok. 1992. No. 3. S. 14-15.

that there are completely different lines of development. Multi-linearity in the usual sense is multi-linearity. The first understanding presupposes the progressive development of all individual societies, and thus of human society as a whole, the second excludes the progress of mankind.

True, with the progressive development of human society as a whole, the supporters of the orthodox interpretation of the change in formations also faced serious problems. After all, it was quite obvious that the change in the stages of progressive development in different societies was far from synchronous. Let's say to early XIX in. some societies were still primitive, others were pre-class, others were "Asiatic", some were feudal, and some were already capitalist. The question arises, at what stage of historical development was human society as a whole at this time? And in a more general setting, 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 over a given period of time. And the supporters of the orthodox version did not give any answer to this question. They generally bypassed him completely. Some of them did not notice him at all, while others tried not to notice.

Summing 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 connections "vertical", connections in time, diachronic, and even then understood extremely one-sided, 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, intersocial connections, in the theory of socio-economic formations they were not given importance. This approach made it impossible to understand the progressive development of human society as a whole, the change in the stages of this development on the scale of all mankind, i.e.

a true understanding of the unity of world history, closed the road to true historical unitarianism.

4. Linear-stadial and plural-cyclical 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 progressive, ascending development of mankind. This understanding of history presupposes the existence of stages in the development of mankind as a whole. The unitary-stage approach arose a long time ago. He found his 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 the subdivision of this history into hunting-gatherer, pastoral (cattle-breeding), agricultural and commercial and industrial periods (A. Turgot, A. Smith, etc.). The same approach found its expression in the identification of first three and then four world-historical eras in the development of civilized mankind: ancient Eastern, ancient, medieval and modern (L. Bruni, F. Biondo, K. Kehler, etc.).

The vice, which I just spoke about, was inherent not only in the orthodox version of the theory of socio-economic formations, but also in all the above concepts. This kind of version of the unitary-stadial understanding of history should most accurately be called unitary-plural-stadial. But the word is overly clumsy. Proceeding from the fact that the words “linear” or “linear” are sometimes used to denote such a view of history, I will call it linear-dimensional. It is this understanding of development that is practically most often meant when they talk about 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, completely independent history. Each of these historical formations arises, develops and sooner or later inevitably perishes. The dead formations are replaced by new ones, which make exactly the same development cycle.

Due to the fact that each such historical formation starts everything from the beginning, it cannot introduce anything fundamentally new into history. Hence it follows that all such formations are completely equal, equivalent. None of them in terms of development level 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, and even less progresses. There is an eternal rotation of many squirrel wheels.

It is not difficult to understand that, according to this point of view, neither human society as a whole nor world history exists 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 plural-cyclical.

A pluralistic understanding of history did not emerge today. Its origins are J.A. Gobi but and G. Rückert. The main provisions of historical pluralism were quite clearly formulated by N. Ya. Danilevsky, brought to the extreme limit by O. Spengler, largely softened by A. J. Toynbee, and, finally, acquired caricature forms in the works of L.N. Gumilyov. The named thinkers named the historical formations identified by them in different ways: civilizations (J.A. Gobi-no, A. J. Toynbee), cultural-historical individuals (G. Ryuk-kert), cultural-historical types (N. Ya. Danilevsky ), cultures or great cultures (O. Spengler), ethnic groups and super-ethnic groups (L. N. Gumilev). But this did not change the very essence of this understanding of history.

Even the classics of the pluralocyclic approach (not to mention their numerous admirers and epigones) did not have any particular scientific value. But the criticism to which they subjected the linear-stage understanding of the historical process was valuable.

Before them, many thinkers in their philosophical and historical constructions proceeded from society in general, which was the only subject of history for them. Historical pluralists have shown that humanity is in fact divided into several largely independent entities, that there is not one, but several subjects of the historical process, and thus, without realizing it, they turned 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 not so much socio-historical organisms as their systems as independent units of historical development. And although they themselves were not engaged in identifying the links between socio-historical organisms that form a 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 us think about the relations between them, focused on identifying “horizontal” connections.

The works of historical pluralists not only drew attention to the connections between simultaneously existing separate societies and their systems, but made us take a fresh look at the "vertical" ties in history. It became clear that in no case could they 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 societies of one type into societies of 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 links 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. Sociohistorical organisms of the past really went through periods of prosperity and decline in their development, and often died. And naturally arose during

the question is how compatible the existence of such cycles is with the concept of world history as a progressive, ascending process.

By now, the plural-cyclical approach to history (in our country it is usually called “civilizational”) has exhausted all its possibilities and has receded into the past. Attempts to revive it, which are now being undertaken in our science, can lead to nothing but embarrassment. This is clearly evidenced by the articles and speeches of our "civilizationalists". Essentially, 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 contradiction with historical reality. And this contradiction was not overcome in the most recent unitary-stage concepts (neo-evolutionism in ethnology and sociology, the concept of modernization and industrial and post-industrial society). All of them remain, in principle, linear-stadial.

5. Relay-formation approach to world history

Currently, there is an urgent need for a new approach, which would be unitary-stadial, but at the same time take into account all the complexity of the world-historical process, an approach that would not reduce the unity of history only to the generality of laws, but would presuppose 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 new approach must 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 presupposes a deep study of not only "vertical", temporary, diachronic connections, but also

connections "horizontal", spatial, synchronous. "Horizontal" links are links between simultaneously existing sociohistorical organisms. Such connections have always existed and exist, if not always between everyone, then at least between neighboring societies. Regional systems of sociohistorical organisms have always existed and still exist, and by now their worldwide system has arisen. 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 intersocial interaction consists in such an effect 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 for further development. It is inter-community induction that can take place in many different ways.

This is not to say that "horizontal" connections have not been investigated 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-systems approach. But if the supporters of the linear-stadial approach absolutized "vertical" ties in history, neglecting "horizontal" ones, then the advocates of a number of the aforementioned trends, in opposition to them, absolutized "horizontal" ties and paid obviously insufficient attention to the "vertical" ones. Therefore, neither the one nor the other got a picture of the development of world history that would correspond to historical reality.

The only way out of the situation is to create an approach that would synthesize stadiality and intersocial induction. In the creation of such a new approach, no general reasoning about stages can help. The basis should be based on a fairly clear stage typology of sociohistorical organisms. To the present

Most of the time, only one of the existing stadial 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 is now found in the writings 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 the sociohistorical organism. It is necessary to identify the socio-economic types of sociohistorical organisms.

The founders of the materialist 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 also non-basic socio-economic types, which I will call socio-economic paraformations (from the Greek para - about, next to) and socio-economic proformations (from the Latin pro - instead of). All socio-economic formations are located 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 pro-formations is insignificant. It is important that they all represent socio-economic types of sociohistorical organisms.

From a certain point, the most important feature of world history has become the uneven development of sociohistorical organisms and, accordingly, their systems. There was a time when all sociohistorical organisms were of the same type. This is the era of early primitive society. Then some 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 preferred

I thaw to call it political (from the Greek. Palitia - the state). With the rise of ancient society, class sociohistorical organisms of at least one more type arose.

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

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

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

Superinduction can result in the perfection of the inferior organism. In this case, this impact can be called progression. In the case of the opposite result, we can talk about regression. This is

action may result in stagnation. This is stagnation. And, finally, the result of superinduction can be a partial or complete destruction of the inferior socior - deconstruction. Most often, the superinduction process includes all three first points, usually with a predominance of one of them.

The concepts of superinduction were created only in our time and in relation only to the new and recent history... These are some of the concepts of modernization (Europeanization, Westernization), as well as the theory of dependent development and world-systems. In the concepts of modernization, progressivization comes to the fore, in the concepts of dependent development - stagnatization. The classical world-systems approach tried to reveal 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. They describe this process 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. Supporters of panegyptism painted a picture of "Egyptization" of the world, champions of pan-Babylonism - its "Babylonization". Historians who held to the facts did not create such concepts. But they could not fail to notice the superinduction processes. And if they did not develop special concepts of superinduction, they introduced terms to designate specific processes of this kind that took place in certain epochs. These are the terms "orientalization" (applied 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 influencing it, that is, it can rise to more high stage mainstream development. This process of "pulling up" inferior organisms to the level of superior ones can be called superiorization. In the concepts of modernization, this is exactly the option. Lagging societies in their development

(traditional, agrarian, premodern) are transformed into capitalist (industrial, modern).

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

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

As already indicated, there is not a single sociohistorical organism, in the development of which more than two formations would be replaced. And there are many societies 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, and the former turned out to be incapable of this and thus fell behind. Now the former inferior organisms have become superior, and the former superior ones - inferior. In this case, the center of historical development moves, the former periphery becomes the center, and former center turns into the periphery. With this option, a kind of transfer of the historical relay race occurs 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 in the development of not a single sociohistorical organism there was no change in

more than two formations does not in the least interfere with the change of any of their numbers in the history of mankind as a whole. However, in this variant, the change in socio-economic formations is thought of as occurring primarily within sociohistorical organisms. But in real history this is not always the case. Therefore, such a concept does not give a complete solution to the problem.

But besides those discussed above, there is another development option. And with him, the system of superior sociohistorical organisms affects inferior societies. But these latter, as a result of such an impact, undergo more than a kind of transformation. They do not turn into organisms of the same type as those affecting them. There is no overriding.

But the type of inferior organisms changes. Inferior organisms turn into societies of this type, which, if approached purely externally, should be ranked as lateral. This type of society is really not a formation, but a paraformation. But this society, which has arisen as a result of progressization, that is, progressive, is capable of further independent progress, and of a special kind. As a result of the action of purely internal forces, this progressive society turns 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 societies, then as a result of ultra-superiorization they "jump" this level and go to an even higher one. A group of sociohistorical organisms appears that belong to a socio-economic formation higher than that to which the former superiors belonged. Now the former become superior, mainstream, and the latter turn into inferior, exmag

strange. There is a change in socio-economic formations, and it does not take place within certain socio-historical organisms, but on the scale of human society as a whole.

It may be said that at the same time a change in the types of society took place within sociohistorical organisms. Indeed, within inferior sociohistorical organisms, one socio-economic type of society was replaced by another, and then by another. But none of those who changed within these societies was not the formation that previously dominated, which was previously 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 one 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 latter societies do not go through the stage at which the first were, do not repeat their movement. Entering the highway of human history, they immediately begin to move from the place where the former superior socio-historical organisms stopped earlier. Ultrasuperiorization takes place when existing superior sociohistorical organisms are not themselves capable of transforming into organisms of a higher type.

An example of ultrasuperiorization is the emergence of an ancient society. Its appearance was completely impossible without the influence of the Middle Eastern sociohistorical organisms on the former pre-class Greek sociohistorical organisms. This progressive influence has long been noticed by historians, who called this process orientalization. But as a result of orientalization, the pre-class Greek societies did not become political societies like those that existed in the Middle East. From the pre-class Greek society, first archaic Greece and then classical Greece arose.

But besides the one discussed above, there is also another type of ultra-superuperization known to history. It took place when, on the one hand, geosocial organisms collided, on the other, demosocial ones. There can be no question of joining the demosociore to the geosocior. It is only possible to join the territory of the geosocior of the territory in which the demosocior lives. In this case, the demosocior, if he continues to remain in this territory, is included, introduced into the geosociore, continuing to remain as a special society. This is a demo-social introduction (lat. Introductio - introduction). It is possible both penetration and settlement of demosociated people on the territory of a geosociora - demosociatory infiltration (from Latin t - v and compare Latin filtratio - filtering). And in both cases, only later, and not always and not soon, does the demosociore collapse and its members directly enter the geosociore. This is geosociated assimilation, it is also demosociated annihilation.

Of particular interest is the invasion of the geosociory territory by demosociors with the subsequent establishment of their dominance over it. This is a demo-social intervention, or demo-social intrusion (from the Latin Shgshsh - pushed in). In this case, demosociory organisms are superimposed on geosocial organisms, the coexistence of two different types of socior in one territory. A situation is created when, on the same territory, part of the 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: demosociory are destroyed, and their members are part of the geosociory, that is, geosociory assimilation occurs, or demosociory annihilation. The second option: the geosocior is destroyed, and the people who made it become members of demosociated organisms. This is demosociated assimilation, or geosociated annihilation.

In the third variant, there is a synthesis of geosociated and demotivated socio-economic and other social structures. As a result of this synthesis, a new type of society emerges. This type of society is different from both the type of the original geo-

socior, and the type of initial demosociors. Such a society may be capable of independent internal development, as a result of which it rises to a higher stage of mainstream development than the original super-ioric 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 transform into a higher type of society. Such a process took place when antiquity was replaced by the Middle Ages. At the same time, historians speak of a Romano-Germanic synthesis.

Ultrasuperiorization in both of its variants is a process of passing on the historical highway the baton from the superior sociohistorical organisms of the old type to the superior sociohistorical organisms of the 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 when applied to the theory of socio-economic formations, the question was posed: is the scheme of change of 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. only the entire human society as a whole? As already shown, practically all Marxists were inclined to the first answer, which made the theory of socio-economic formations one of the variants of the linear-stage understanding of history.

But the 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 contradiction with historical reality. But besides him, something else is possible - relay-stage.

Of course, the relay-formation understanding of history is emerging only now. But the idea of ​​a historical relay race and even a relay-stage approach to world history arose quite a long time ago, although they 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 testifying to the division of mankind into separate formations 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 XVII century. it was adhered to by the Englishman J. Haykwill, in the 18th century. - Germans I. 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 GVF 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 forgotten23.

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

There is only one way to prove the correctness of such an approach to world history: to draw, guided by it, such a holistic picture of world history, which would be in greater accordance with the facts accumulated by historical science than all existing ones. Such an attempt was undertaken by me in a number of works, to which I refer to

23 For details on all this see: Semenov Yu.I. Clio's Secrets. Concise introduction to the philosophy of history. M., 1996.

24See: Semenov Yu. I. World history as a single process of human development in time and space // Philosophy and Society. 1997. No. 1; He's the same. World history in the most concise presentation // Vostok. 1997. No. 2.

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

It was believed that any social phenomenon can be correctly understood only in connection with a certain OEF, an element or product of which it is. The very term "formation" was borrowed by Marx from geology.

The completed theory of O.E.F. Marx has not formulated, however, if we generalize his various statements, then we can conclude that Marx singled out three epochs or formations of world history according to the criterion of dominant production relations (forms of ownership): 1) primary formation (archaic pre-class societies); 2) a secondary, or "economic" social formation based on private property and commodity exchange and including the Asian, ancient, feudal and capitalist modes of production; 3) the 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, in general 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 implemented 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 recurrence in history and thereby give it a strictly scientific analysis. The change of formations forms the main line of progress, the formations perish due to internal antagonisms, but with the advent of communism, the law of the change of formations 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 human world 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, 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, it already belongs to the history of social thought.

However, overcoming formational dogma does not mean abandoning the formulation and solution of issues of social typology. The types of society and its nature, depending on the tasks to be solved, can be distinguished according to various criteria, including socio-economic.

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 deformation and catastrophe.

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 publicly owned. Labor is universal, property is only collective.

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

A class of people occupied exclusively with management gradually emerged from them. This class gradually became isolated, accumulated privileges and material wealth in its hands, which led to the emergence of private property, property inequality and led to the transition to slavery. The administrative apparatus, on the other hand, acquired an increasingly complex character, gradually transforming into a state.

The existence of the Asian mode of production as a separate formation is not generally 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. Direct labor is occupied by a separate class of slaves - people deprived of freedom, owned by the slave owners and regarded as "talking tools." Slaves work but do not own the means of production. Slave owners organize production and appropriate the results of slave labor.

4.Feudalism ... In society, there are classes of feudal lords - landowners - and dependent peasants who are personally dependent on the feudal lords. Production (mainly agricultural) is carried out by the labor of dependent peasants, exploited by the feudal lords. Feudal society is characterized by a monarchical type of government and an estate social structure.

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

The main mechanism that induces work is economic coercion - the worker has no opportunity to provide his life in any other way than 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 publicly owned, and private ownership of the means of production is completely abolished. Labor is universal, there is no class division. It is assumed that a person works consciously, seeking to bring the greatest benefit to society and not needing external stimuli such as economic coercion.

At the same time, society provides any available benefits to every person. Thus, the principle "Each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" Is implemented. 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, a transition from capitalism to communism, is considered socialism, in which the socialization of the means of production occurs, but commodity-money relations, economic compulsion to labor and a number of other features characteristic of capitalist society are preserved. Under socialism, the principle is realized: "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 works, considered three new "modes of production": "Asiatic", "antique" 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 "history knows five socio-economic formations: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist."

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

The historian of antiquity M. Finley pointed to this fact as one of the evidence of the weak 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 throughout Europe had survived from primitive times.

Theories of local civilizations

The emergence of the theory of social progress

Social progress: civilizations and formations

The emergence of the theory of social progress. In contrast to a primitive society, where extremely slow changes stretch over many generations, already in ancient civilizations social changes and development begin to be realized by people and are fixed in the public consciousness; at the same time, there are attempts to theoretically explain their causes and the desire to anticipate their nature and direction. Since such changes occur most clearly and quickly in political life - the periodic rise and fall of great empires, the transformation of the internal structure of various states, the enslavement of some peoples by others - so the first concepts of social development in antiquity seek to explain precisely the political changes that are given the character of cyclicality. So, already Plato and Aristotle created the first cyclical theories of the development of society, in which they tried to explain the change of government in the ancient Greek city-states from despotism to aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, anarchy, tyranny. As society develops, it is cyclical social change extended to other areas of his life.

World history was perceived as the history of the heyday, greatness and death of great empires, replacing each other for many centuries. Typical example a similar interpretation of history can serve as a treatise by the French enlightener of the early 18th century C. L. Montesquieu "Reflections on the causes of the greatness and fall of the Romans" (1734). It is instructive that it was at the beginning of the 18th century that the Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744), in his book "Foundations new science[about the general nature of nations] "(1725) set forth the universal theory of the historical cycle, which has not lost interest, consisting of three epochs with corresponding cycles - divine, heroic and human, replacing each other in the process of a general crisis. And even a powerful rise and flourishing of culture in Western Europe in the XV-XVII centuries was perceived by contemporaries as the Renaissance of the best achievements of the period of antiquity.

It took another two or three centuries for the most discerning minds of the Enlightenment by the end of the 18th century (Turgot and Condorcet in France, Priestley and Gibbon in England, Herder in Germany and others) to come to the conclusion that the new era in the social development of Europe far surpassed antiquity. and is a further stage of social development. This is how the first theories of social progress in world history appeared, undermining the concept of its cyclical nature and affirming the idea of ​​the progressive development of mankind. This belief in the universal nature of social progress was most clearly stated in the book by J. A. Condorcet "A sketch of the historical picture of the progress of the human mind" (1795). In his book, which he wrote, hiding from the death sentence, Condor-se spoke optimistically about the future of mankind, set himself the goal of "showing by reasoning and facts that there was no limit in the development of human abilities, that a person's ability to improve is really unlimited that success in this improvement is now independent of any force wishing to stop it ... Without a doubt, progress can be more or less rapid, but development will never go back ... "[Condorcet J. A. Sketch historical picture of the progress of the human mind. M., 1936. S. 5-6.].

Throughout the 19th century, the theory of social progress, the continuous progressive development of mankind, despite some skeptical remarks, clearly prevailed over cyclical and decadent concepts. She became a leader in both academic writings and public opinion.

At the same time, it took different forms and was by no means an abstract theoretical concept, but was closely connected with the ideological struggle in society, with socio-economic and political forecasts of the future of mankind.

Theories of local civilizations. Many historians and philosophers began to look for explanations for the peculiar development of not only individual countries and regions of the globe, but also the history of mankind as a whole. So in the 19th century, the ideas of a civilizational way of development of society were born and widely spread, which resulted in the concept of the diversity of civilizations. One of the first thinkers who developed the concept of world history as a set of independent and specific civilizations, which he called cultural and historical types of humanity, was the Russian naturalist and historian N. Ya. Danilevsky (1822-1885). In his book "Russia and Europe" (1871), trying to identify the differences between civilizations, which he regarded as unique, non-coinciding cultural and historical types of mankind, he chronologically singled out the following types of organization of social formations that coexisted in time, as well as replacing each other: 1 ) Egyptian, 2) Chinese, 3) Assyro-Babylonian, 4) Chaldean, 5) Indian, 6) Iranian, 7) Jewish, 8) Greek, 9) Roman, 10) New Semitic, or Arabian, 11) Romano-Germanic, or European, to which he added two civilizations of pre-Columbian America, destroyed by the Spaniards. Now, he believed, the Russian-Slavic cultural type is coming to the world-historical arena, called upon, thanks to its universal mission, to reunite humanity. N. Ya.Danilevsky's book became a manifesto of late Slavophilism and at the end of the 19th century caused a wide and sharp controversy among such prominent representatives of social thought in Russia as V.S.Soloviev, N.N. Strakhov, F.I.Tyutchev, K.N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin and others.

Many of Danilevsky's ideas at the beginning of the 20th century were adopted by the German historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), the author of the two-volume work "The Decline of Europe".

"The Decline of Europe" (literally translated "The Decline of the Western Countries", in 2 volumes, 1918-1922) brought Spengler worldwide fame, for it was published immediately after the First World War, which plunged Europe into ruins and caused the growth of two new "overseas" powers - the USA and Japan. For several years, 32 editions of the book were published in the main world languages ​​(including two in Russia; unfortunately, then only the translation of the first volume was published - in 1922 in Moscow and in 1923 in Petrograd). The book drew numerous, mostly admiring responses from eminent thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic.

In his judgments about the history of mankind, in contrasting different civilizations to each other, Spengler was incomparably more categorical than Danilevsky. This is largely due to the fact that "The Decline of Europe" was written during a period of unprecedented political, economic and social upheavals that accompanied World War, the collapse of three great empires and revolutionary transformations in Russia. In his book, Spengler singled out 8 higher cultures, the listing of which basically coincides with the cultural and historical types of Danilevsky (Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Byzantine-Arab, Western European, Maya), and also anticipated the flourishing of Russian culture. He distinguished between culture and civilization, seeing in the latter only decline, the last phase of the development of culture on the eve of its death, when creativity is replaced by imitation of innovations, their grinding.

Spengler's interpretation of both world history and the history of its individual constituent cultures-civilizations is fatalistic. Even separate cultures coexisting in time or replacing each other are hermetically isolated from each other, because they are based on different, alien to each other ideas about the world, beauty, human vocation, etc. Their development is predetermined not by rational causality, but by fate. Each culture is assigned a certain time limit from inception to decline - about a thousand years. Even the formal similarity in the architectural style and other external incarnations of different cultures does not deny their substantial opposition, as, for example, between ancient magic and modern science... Western culture rests on the "Faustian", scientific and cognitive attitude to the world and exhausts itself, convinced of the powerlessness of science in relation to nature.

Spengler's concept, like Danilevsky's concept, attracts the attention of scientists by highlighting diversity in the history of mankind, drawing attention to the role of spiritual traditions in the formation of society, to an active role, often primary, of consciousness, customs and mores in historical events.

The theory of civilizations was further developed in the works of the English historian A. J. Toynbee (1889-1975). Since at least the middle of the 20th century, his work has had a significant impact not only on academic circles, but also on the public and political consciousness of the countries of the West and the Third World.

In the process of developing the concept of civilizations, Toynbee's theoretical views underwent significant evolution and, in some positions, even a kind of metamorphosis. This is explained by two circumstances: on the one hand, the concept itself was set forth by him in the twelve-volume work "Research of History", which was published for almost three decades - from 1934 to 1961, and then, until his death, the author in many books constantly returned to this topic; of course, throughout almost his entire creative life, Toynbee continuously enriched his theory with new provisions. On the other hand, the very time of Toynbee's life coincided with grandiose political and social transformations in the history of mankind - World War II and the Cold War, the liberation of most peoples from colonial dependence, the emergence of global problems, that is, with events that required deep comprehension and rethinking of the entire previous history. And it is this evolution of the views of the English historian that gives particular value to his concept of civilizations.

In the first volumes of his research, Toynbee adhered to such ideas about civilizations, which were in many ways similar to Spengler's concept: he emphasized the fragmentation of civilizations, their independence from each other, which did not allow them to unite their unique history in the universal history of mankind. Thus, he denied social progress as the progressive development of mankind. Each civilization existed for a period allotted to it by history, although not as predetermined as Spengler allotted to his cultures. The driving force behind the development of civilizations was the dialectic of challenge and response. As long as the creative minority governing the development of civilization, its elite, was able to provide satisfactory answers to internal and external threats to its original growth, civilization grew stronger and flourished. But as soon as the elite, for some reason, was powerless before the next challenge, an irreparable breakdown occurred: the creative minority turned into a dominant minority, the bulk of the population, led by them, was transformed into the "internal proletariat", which on its own or in alliance with the "external proletariat" (barbarians) plunged civilization into decline and destruction. At the same time, civilization did not disappear without a trace; resisting decline, it gave birth to a "universal state" and a "universal church." The first disappeared with the death of civilization, while the second became a kind of "chrysalis" - heir, contributing to the emergence of a new civilization. Initially, in the first ten volumes, Toynbee singled out nineteen independent civilizations with two branches: Egyptian, Andean, Chinese, Minoan, Sumerian, Maya, Indian, Hittite, Syrian, Hellenistic, Western, Orthodox, Far Eastern, Iranian, Arab, Hindu, Babylonian Yucatan, Mexican; its offshoot in Japan adjoined the Far East, and an offshoot in Russia adjoined the Orthodox. In addition, several civilizations that were delayed in their development and several abortive were mentioned.

Among these civilizations, there were distinguished both "kindred", connected with each other by a "chrysalis - a universal church", and completely isolated. But even "kindred" civilizations differed from each other in the systems of social and moral values ​​prevailing in them, in the prevailing customs and mores. Although civilizations, according to Toynbee, are incompatible and historically do not perceive each other as predecessors and followers, nevertheless they are linked by the same milestones and key events, thanks to which, on the basis of civilizations that have already completed their cycle of development, it is possible to anticipate future events in existing civilizations. : for example, the upcoming breakdown, the "time of troubles", the formation of a "universal state" and even the outcome of the struggle between the original center and the periphery, etc.

Subsequently, Toynbee gradually departs from the above scheme. First of all, many civilizations appeared to have increasingly adopted the legacy of their predecessors. In the XII volume of his research, symbolically entitled "Rethinking" (1961), he develops the idea of ​​successive civilizations of the first, second and third generations, which adopted (mainly thanks to the "universal church") many of the social and spiritual values ​​of their predecessors: for example, the West adopted the heritage Hellenism, and the latter - the spiritual values ​​of the Minoan (Cretan-Mycenaean) civilization. The history of China and India is getting rid of unnecessary fragmentation into two or three civilizations. Thus, of the original 21 civilizations, 15 remain, not counting the side ones. Toynbee believes that his main mistake is that initially, in his historical and philosophical constructions, he proceeded only from one Hellenistic model and extended its regularities to the others, and only then based his theory on three models: Hellenistic, Chinese and Israeli.

World history began to acquire a universal human character in Toynbee's concept: the cycles of successive generations of civilizations appeared in the form of rotating wheels advancing humanity to an ever deeper religious comprehension of its vocation: from the first mythological concepts to pagan religions, and then to syncretic religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism). IN modern era According to Toynbee, there is a need for further ecumenical religious and moral unity of mankind in solidarity for all religions (including communism, which he also considered as one of the world religions) and salvific pantheism in conditions of an ecological crisis.

Thus, the theory of civilizations in the later works of Toynbee and his numerous followers gradually gravitated towards a universal explanation world history, towards rapprochement, and in the future (despite the discreteness introduced by the development of individual civilizations) - towards the spiritual and material unity of mankind.

The theory of socio-economic formations. Of the theories of social development in the mid-19th and late 20th centuries, the Marxist concept of social progress as a sequential change of formations was developed most thoroughly. Several generations of Marxists worked on the development and coordination of its individual fragments, striving, on the one hand, to eliminate its internal contradictions, and on the other, to supplement it by enriching the latest discoveries... In this regard, heated discussions took place among the Marxists themselves on a variety of topics - suffice it to mention at least the topic of the "Asian mode of production," "developed socialist society," and so on.

Although Marx and Engels strove to substantiate their concept of socio-economic formations with numerous references to historical sources, chronological tables and factual material gleaned from different eras, it nevertheless mainly rested on abstract, speculative ideas that they had assimilated from their predecessors and contemporaries - Saint-Simon, Hegel, L. G. Morgan and many others. In other words, the concept of formations is not an empirical generalization of human history, but a creative critical generalization of various theories and views on world history, a kind of logic of history. But, as you know, even "objective" logic does not coincide with concrete reality: there are always more or less significant discrepancies between the logical and the historical.

The views of Marx and Engels on the "objective" logic of history in connection with the concepts of socio-economic formations underwent refinements and some changes. So, initially they leaned towards the logic of Saint-Simon, identifying slavery and the ancient world, serfdom and the Middle Ages, free (wage) labor and the New Time. Then they adopted Hegel's logic of dividing world history (with well-known modifications): the Ancient East (no one is free), antiquity (some are free) and the Germanic world (all are free). The ancient East turned into an Asian mode of production, the ancient world into a slave-owning society, while the Germanic world was divided into serfdom and capitalism.

Finally, by the time Engels wrote Anti-Duhring and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the “objective logic of history” had acquired its complete form, forming the division of world history into five socio-economic formations, distinguished from two social triads. The first, "big" triad includes a primitive communal (collectivist) system without private property, its antithesis is a class-antagonistic, private-property system and their synthesis in a classless non-antagonistic system of general welfare, or communism. This large "triad" includes a small "triad" of the antagonistic system: slave society, feudalism, or serf society, and, finally, capitalism, or "wage slavery." Thus, the periodization of world history into five formations consistently follows from "objective" dialectical logic: primitive communism (tribal society), slave society, feudalism, capitalism and communism, which includes socialism as an initial phase, and sometimes is identified with it. Such a periodization of social progress mainly rested on its Eurocentric interpretation, with some reservations extended to the rest of the world, as well as on its providential nature, aspiring to communism.

Marx and Engels viewed the successive change of socio-economic formations as a "natural-historical process" independent of the consciousness and intentions of people, indirectly assimilating it thereby to the objective laws of nature. This is evidenced by the very term "formation", introduced at the end of the 18th century by T. Füxel and widely used by mineralogists, paleontologists and geologists (including C. Lyell) to designate the historical strata of sedimentary rocks in order to determine their age.

Over the century that has passed since the life of Marx and Engels, our knowledge of the world history of mankind has expanded and multiplied immeasurably: it deepened from 3 to 8-10 millennia BC, included the Neolithic revolution, and also spread to almost all continents. The history of mankind has ceased to fit into the idea of ​​the development of society as a change in formations. As an example, we can refer to the history of medieval China, where they were familiar with the compass and gunpowder, they invented paper and primitive printing, where paper money was in circulation (long before Western Europe), where the Chinese admiral Chen Ho made six voyages at the beginning of the 15th century to Indonesia, India, Africa and even the Red Sea, which were not inferior in scale to the future travels of European seafarers (which, however, did not lead to the emergence of capitalism).

Thus, the formational path of human development by no means explains all the complex vicissitudes of the progressive development of society, which is largely due to the exaggerated idea of ​​the role of economic relations in the life of society and the belittling of the independent (far from always relative) role of social customs and mores, culture as a whole in activities of people.

The concept of formations began to lose its former attractiveness as a means of periodizing world history. The very concept of "formation" gradually lost its objective content, in particular, due to its arbitrary application to various epochs in the history of the "third world". More and more historians perceived the concept of "formation" in the sense of M. Weber's "ideal type".

Finally, especially since the second half of the 20th century, the following claims have been made to the concept of formations. It followed that socialism, replacing capitalism, should have a higher productivity of labor, an increase in the well-being of workers and their higher standard of living, a flourishing of democracy and self-government of workers, of course, while maintaining the planned development of the economy and centralized management of many spheres of social life. However, decades passed after the victory of socialism was proclaimed, and the level of economic development and well-being of the population both in the USSR and in other socialist countries still lagged significantly behind the level achieved in the developed capitalist countries. Of course, quite convincing explanations were found for this: the socialist revolution won, contrary to forecasts, initially not in the advanced, but in economically more backward countries, the socialist countries had to experience the dire consequences of the Second World War, finally, " cold war"consumes huge economic and human resources of society. It was difficult to dispute these explanations, but nevertheless the paradoxical position became more and more obvious: how could it be possible to be a country with the most progressive social system without being among the most advanced economic countries?

In the 60s, the Marxist leadership of the Socialist Unified Party of Germany, for discussion of the Marxist parties, primarily the CPSU, raised the question of giving socialism the role of a relatively independent socio-economic formation, which cannot be regarded as a simple transition to communism. It can exist for as long as it takes to eliminate its lag behind the parameters of a communist society. Despite initial controversy, this view was largely accepted. Socialism, instead of rapidly "developing into communism", gradually became a "developed socialist society", then entered its very initial "stage", simultaneously approaching theoretically and moving away practically from communism. And finally, in the mid-1980s, both the economic and political crisis of socialism became obvious, and at the same time the crisis of Marxism as a whole.

All of the above does not detract from the deep theoretical content of the concept of socio-economic formations. It would be wrong to categorically oppose the civilizational way of human development to the formational one, for both of these approaches to world history do not so much deny as complement each other. The concept of civilizations allows us to comprehend the history of large regions of the globe and large periods in their specific diversity that eludes formational analysis, as well as to avoid economic determinism, to reveal the largely decisive role of cultural traditions, the continuity of morals and customs, and the peculiarities of people's consciousness in different eras. In turn, the formational approach, with its correct and careful application, can shed light on the socio-economic periodization in the development of individual peoples and humanity as a whole. Modern historical science and philosophy are now in search of the most fruitful combination of both of these approaches in order to determine the specifics of modern civilization, its historical place in world history and the most promising introduction to the achievements of the planetary, common human civilization that is emerging in our era.