Of the theories of social development in the middle of the 19th and the end of the 20th century, 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, enriching it with 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", etc.

Although Marx and Engels strove to substantiate their concept of socio-economic formations by numerous references to historical sources, chronological tables and factual material gleaned from different eras, it nevertheless mainly rested on abstract, speculative concepts 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 inconsistencies 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 have undergone refinements and some changes. So, initially they leaned towards the logic of Saint-Simon, identifying slavery and 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-Dühring 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 an antagonistic class, 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 the "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. This 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.

The successive change of socio-economic formations was considered by Marx and Engels 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 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 \u200b\u200bthe development of society as a change in formations. As an example, we can refer to the history of medieval China, where they were well acquainted 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 at the beginning of the 15th century made six voyages to Indonesia, India, Africa and even the Red Sea, which were not inferior in scale to the future voyages 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 \u200b\u200bthe 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, which is replacing capitalism, should have a higher labor productivity, 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 have passed since 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, and finally, the "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 it was possible to be a country with the most progressive social orderwithout being among the most advanced economic countries?

In the 60s, the Marxist leadership of the Socialist Unified Party of Germany raised the issue of giving socialism the role of a relatively independent socio-economic formation, which cannot be regarded as a simple transition to communism, for discussion of Marxist parties, primarily the CPSU. It can exist for as long as it takes to eliminate its lag behind the parameters of communist society. Despite initial controversy, this point of 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.

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

At the foundation of each formation lie certain productive forces (i.e. objects of labor, means of production and labor power), their character and level. With regard to the basis of the formation, such is the production relationship, this is the relationship that develops between people in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods. In a class society, economic relations between classes become the essence and core of production relations. The whole building of the formation grows in this basis.

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

The relations of production determine the superstructure towering over them. A superstructure is a set of political, legal, moral, artistic, philosophical, religious views of society and their corresponding relations and institutions. In relation to the superstructure, production relations act as an economic basis, the main law of formation development is the law of interaction between the basis and the superstructure. This law determines the role of the entire system of economic relations, the main influence of ownership on the means of production in relation to political and legal ideas, institutions, social relations (ideological, moral, religious, spiritual). There is a total interdependence between the base and the superstructure. The base is always primary, the superstructure is secondary, but in turn it affects the base, it develops relatively independently. According to Marx, the influence of the base on the superstructure is not fatal, not mechanistic, not unambiguous in different conditions. The superstructure prompts the basis for its development.

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

Finally, it is the type and form of the family.

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

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

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

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

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

• 1) those in which people are forced to work forcibly or economically, while the results of labor are alienated from them;
• 2) those in which people work of their own free will, with an interest and reasoned participation in the distribution of the results of labor.

The distribution of the social product under slaveholding, feudal and capitalist relations is carried out according to the first type, under socialist and communist relations according to the second type. (In primitive social relations, distribution is carried out haphazardly and it is difficult to distinguish any type). Thus Dovgel E.S. believes that both "capitalists" and "communists" have to admit: capitalism in economically developed countries today is just traditional words and "plaques in the brain", as a tribute to the irrevocably past history, in essence, the social-production relations are high levels of development (socialist and communist) are already very common in countries with the highest level of efficiency in production and human life (USA, Finland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Canada, France, Japan, etc.). To the USSR, however, the definition of a country as a socialist country was applied unfoundedly. Dovgel E.S. The theory of socio-economic formations and the convergence of ideologies in the economy. "Organization and Management", international scientific and practical journal, 2002, no. 3, p. 145. The author of this work also agrees with this position.

Among the main drawbacks of the formational approach are underestimation of the ability of capitalist society to change independently, underestimation of the "development" of the capitalist system is Marx's underestimation of the peculiarity of capitalism in a number of socio-economic formations. Marx creates a theory of formations, considering them as stages of social development, and in the preface "To the Critique of Political Economy" he writes "The prehistory of human society ends with a bourgeois economic formation." Marx established an objective interdependence between the level of development and the state of society, a change in the types of its economic argumentation, he showed world history as a dialectical changeability of social structures, he sort of streamlined the course of world history. This was a discovery in the history of human civilization. The transition from one formation to another was accomplished through a revolution, the disadvantage of the Marxist scheme is the idea of \u200b\u200bthe same type of historical fate of capitalism and pre-capitalist formations. Both Marx and Engels, perfectly realizing and repeatedly revealing the deepest qualitative differences between capitalism and feudalism, with surprising constancy emphasize the uniformity, uniformity of the capitalist and feudal formations, their subordination to the same general historical law. They pointed to the contradictions of the same type between productive forces and production relations, here and there they recorded the inability to cope with them, here and there they recorded death as a form of society's transition to another, higher stage of development. Marx's change of formations is reminiscent of the change of human generations, more than one generation is not given to live two lifetimes, so formations come, flourish, die. This dialectic does not concern communism, it belongs to a different historical era. Marx and Engels did not admit the thought that capitalism could discover fundamentally new ways of resolving its contradictions, could choose an entirely new form of historical movement.

None of the above-mentioned main theoretical points, which form the basis of the theory of formations, is now indisputable. The theory of socio-economic formations is not only based on theoretical conclusions of the mid-19th century, but because of this it cannot explain many of the contradictions that have arisen: the existence, along with zones of progressive (upward) development, of zones of backwardness, stagnation and dead ends; transformation of the state in one form or another into an important factor in social production relations; modification and modification of classes; the emergence of a new hierarchy of values \u200b\u200bwith the priority of universal values \u200b\u200bover class ones.

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

The disadvantages identified in the formational approach are taken into account to some extent civilizational approach... It was developed in the works of N. Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, and later A. Toynbee. They put forward the idea of \u200b\u200ba civilizational structure of social life. According to them, the basis of social life is more or less isolated from each other "cultural and historical types" (Danilevsky) or "civilizations" (Spengler, Toynbee), passing through a series of successive stages in their development: origin, flowering, aging, decline.

All these concepts are characterized by such features as: rejection of the Eurocentric, one-line diagram of the progress of society; conclusion about the existence of many cultures and civilizations, which are characterized by locality and different quality; the statement about the same significance of all cultures in the historical process. The civilizational approach helps to see in history without discarding certain options as not meeting the criteria of any one culture. But the civilizational approach to understanding the historical process is not devoid of some shortcomings. In particular, it does not take into account the relationship between different civilizations, does not explain the phenomenon of recurrence.

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

In the middle of the XIX century. Marxism arose, a component of which was the philosophy of history - historical materialism. Historical materialism is Marxist sociological theory - the science of general and specific laws of the functioning and development of society.

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

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

The logic is as follows. The main problem for society is the production of livelihoods (food, housing, etc.). This production is always carried out with the help of instruments of labor. Certain objects of labor are also involved.

At each specific stage of history, the productive forces have a certain level of development, and they determine (determine) certain production relations.

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

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

The concept of the theory, its supporters

In the XIX century. the productive forces acquired a qualitatively different character. The technical revolution has caused the massive use of machines. Their use was possible only by joint, collective efforts. The production took on a direct social character. As a result, ownership had to be made common, to resolve the contradiction between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation.

Remark 1

According to Marx, politics, ideology and other forms of social consciousness (superstructure) have a derivative character. They reflect industrial relations.

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

Remark 2

Society has gone through several formations: the initial, slave-owning, feudal, bourgeois.

The latter creates the prerequisites (material, social, spiritual) for the transition to the communist formation. Since the core of the formation is the mode of production as a dialectical unity of productive forces and production relations, the stages of human history in Marxism are often called not a formation, but a mode of production.

Marxism regards the development of society as a natural-historical process of replacing one mode of production with another, higher one. The founder of Marxism had to focus on the material factors in the development of history, since idealism reigned around. This made it possible to accuse Marxism of "economic determinism" that ignores the subjective factor of history.

IN last years life F. Engels tried to correct this deficiency. Lenin attached particular importance to the role of the subjective factor. Marxism considers the class struggle to be the main driving force in history.

One socio-economic formation is replaced by another in the process of social revolutions. The conflict between productive forces and relations of production manifests itself in the clash of certain social groups, antagonistic classes, which are the actors of the revolution.

The classes themselves are formed on the basis of the relationship to the means of production.

So, the theory of socio-economic formations is based on the recognition of action in the natural-historical process of objective trends, formulated in the following laws:

• Correspondence of production relations to the nature and level of development of the productive forces;
• Primary basis and secondary superstructure;
• Class struggle and social revolutions;
• Natural and historical development of mankind through the change of socio-economic formations.

conclusions

After the victory of the proletariat, public ownership puts everyone in the same position with respect to the means of production, and therefore leads to the disappearance of the class division of society and the abolition of antagonism.

Remark 3

The biggest drawback in the theory of socio-economic formations and the sociological concept of Karl Marx is that he refused to recognize the right to a historical future for all classes and strata of society, except for the proletariat.

Despite the shortcomings and the criticism that Marxism has been subjected to for 150 years, it has more influenced the development of social thought of mankind.

Introduction

Today the concepts of the historical process (formational, civilizational, modernization theory) have found their limits of applicability. The degree of awareness of the limitations of these concepts is different: the shortcomings of the formation theory are most of all realized, as for the civilizational doctrine and theories of modernization, there are more illusions regarding their possibilities of explaining the historical process.

The inadequacy of these concepts for the study of social changes does not mean their absolute falsity, it is only about the fact that the categorical apparatus of each of the concepts, the range of social phenomena described by it are not complete enough, at least with regard to the description of what is contained in alternative theories.

It is necessary to rethink the content of the descriptions of social changes, as well as the concepts of the general and the unique, on the basis of which generalizations and differentiations are made, schemes of the historical process are built.

Historical process theories reflect a one-sided understanding historical changes, there is a reduction of the variety of their forms to some types. The formation concept sees in the historical process only progress, and total, considering that progressive development encompasses all spheres of social life, including man.

Karl Marx's theory of socio-economic formations

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

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 into two main types according to the method of their internal organization.

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 socior 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 of the earth's surface they occupy. As a result, the personnel of each such organism acts in relation to this organism as an independent special phenomenon - its population. I will call this kind of society geosocial organisms (geosociors). They are characteristic of a class society. They are usually called states or countries.

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 an aggregate 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 interfered with the understanding of the category of the socio-economic formation. It was impossible to truly understand the category of the socio-economic formation without comparing it with the concept of a sociohistorical 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 general 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 socio-historical organism belonging to one or another socio-economic formation and this formation itself is the ratio of the individual and the general.

The problem of the general and the particular belongs to the most important problems of philosophy, and disputes around it have been conducted throughout the history of this area of \u200b\u200bhuman 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.

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, regularities, essence, necessity is undoubted. And all this is common. The general thus 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 common does not consist at all 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, the world has two different kinds objective existence: one kind - independent existence, as there is a separate, and the second - existence only in the separate and through the separate, as the general exists.

Sometimes, however, they say that the separate exists as such, while the general, while actually existing, does not exist as such. In what follows, I will designate independent existence as self-existence, as self-being, and existence in another and through another as other-existence, or as other-being.

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 social science is the study of the laws of functioning and development of each of the socio-economic formations, that is, the creation of a theory of each of them. In relation to capitalism K. Marx tried to solve such a problem.

The only way that can lead to the creation of a theory of any formation is to identify that essential, common thing that manifests itself in the development of all sociohistorical 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.

It is quite understandable 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, which 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. It can act as a sociohistorical organism only in theory, but not in reality. Each specific socio-economic formation, being a certain type of society, is 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 the objective general that is inherent in all sociohistorical organisms, regardless of their type. In relation to sociohistorical organisms of this type, each specific formation acts as a general one. In relation to society in general, a concrete formation appears as a general of a lower level, that is, as a special one, as a specific type of society in general, as a special society.

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.

As a reaction to this kind of 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 having found such formations in the historical reality, 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.

• 1. The basis of the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations is the materialist understanding of the history of human development as a whole, as a historically changing set of various forms of human activity in the production of their lives.
• 2. The unity of productive forces and production relations constitutes a historically determined mode of production of the material life of society.
• 3. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual process of life in general.
• 4. Material productive forces in Marxism mean the instruments of production or means of production, technologies and people who use them. The main productive force is a person, his physical and mental abilities, as well as his cultural and moral level.
• 5. The relations of production in the Marxist theory denote the relations of individuals about both the reproduction of the human species in general and the actual production of means of production and consumer goods, their distribution, exchange and consumption.
• 6. The totality of production relations, as a mode of production of the material life of society, is economic structure society.
• 7. Under the socio-economic formation in Marxism is understood the historical period of human development, characterized by a certain mode of production.
• 8. According to the Marxist theory, humanity as a whole moves progressively from less developed socio-economic formations to more developed ones. This is the dialectical logic that Marx extended to the history of human development.
• 9. 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 society in a pure capitalist, capitalist in a communist.
• 10. The whole history of the development of mankind in Marxism was presented as dialectical, translational motion of humanity from the primitive communist formation to the Asian and ancient (slaveholding), and from them to the feudal, and then to the bourgeois (capitalist) socio-economic formation.

Social and historical practice has confirmed the correctness of these Marxist conclusions. And if there are disputes about the Asian and ancient (slave-owning) modes of production and their transition to feudalism in science, then the reality of the existence of the historical period of feudalism, and then its evolutionary-revolutionary development into capitalism, is beyond doubt.

11. Marxism revealed the economic reasons for the change in socio-economic formations. Their essence lies in the fact that at a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - which is only a legal expression of this - with the property relations, within which they have been developing so far. From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then the era comes social revolution... With the change in the economic basis, a revolution takes place more or less rapidly in the entire enormous superstructure.

This happens because the productive forces of society develop according to their own internal laws. In their movement, they always outstrip production relations that develop within property relations.

K. Marx worked out his basic idea of \u200b\u200bthe natural-historical process of the development of society, having singled out economic relations from different areas of social life, from all social relations - production relations as basic and determining other relations1.

Taking the fact of earning a livelihood as a starting point, Marxism connected with it those relations that people enter into in the production process, and in the system of these relations of production saw the basis - the basis of a certain society - which is clothed with political and legal superstructures and various forms public thought.

Each system of production relations that arises at a certain stage of development of the productive forces is subordinated both to the general for all formations and to the special laws characteristic of only one of them, the laws of origin, functioning and transition to a higher form. The actions of people within each socio-economic formation were generalized by Marxism and reduced to the actions of large masses, in a class society - classes that realize in their activities the urgent needs of social development.

A socio-economic formation is, according to Marxism, a historical type of society based on a certain mode of production and is a stage in the progressive development of mankind from the primitive communal system through the slave system, feudalism and capitalism to the communist formation. The concept of "socio-economic formation" is the cornerstone of the Marxist understanding of history. In this case, one formation is replaced by another as a result of a social revolution. Capitalist society, according to Marxism, is the last of the formations based on class antagonism. It ends the prehistory of mankind and begins the true history - communism.

Formation types

Marxism distinguishes between five types of socio-economic formations.

The primitive communal system is a primary (or archaic) social formation, the structure of which is characterized by the interaction of communal and related forms of a community of people. This formation covers the time from the inception of social relations to the emergence of class society. With a broad interpretation of the concept of "primary formation", the beginning of the primitive communal system is considered the phase of the primitive herd, and the final stage is the society of communal statehood, where class differentiation has already been outlined. Primitive communal relations reach the greatest structural completeness during the period of the clan structure, formed by the interaction of the clan community and the clan. The basis of production relations here was the common ownership of the means of production (tools of production, land, as well as housing, household equipment), within which there was also personal ownership of weapons, household items, clothing, etc. Existing in the conditions of the initial stages of technical the development of mankind, collective forms of property, religious and magical ideas, primitive relations are supplanted by new social relations as a result of the improvement of tools of labor, forms of economy, the evolution of family-marriage and other relations.

The slave-owning system is the first class antagonistic society that arose on the ruins of the primitive communal system. Slavery, according to Marxism, in various scales and forms existed in all countries and among all peoples. Under a slave system, the main productive force of society is slaves, and the dominant class is the class of slave owners, which splits into different social groups (landowners, merchants, usurers, etc.). In addition to these two main classes - slaves and slave owners - in the slave society there are intermediate strata of the free population: small owners who live by their own labor (artisans and peasants), as well as the lumpen proletariat, formed from ruined artisans and peasants. The basis of the dominant relations of production in a slave-owning society is the private property of the slave owner in the means of production and slaves. With the emergence of a slave society, the state arises and develops. With the disintegration of the slaveholding system, the class struggle intensifies and the slaveholding form of exploitation is replaced by another - the feudal one.

Feudalism (from Lat. Feodum - estate) is the middle link in the change of formations between the slave system and capitalism. It arises through the synthesis of elements of decomposition of primitive communal and slave-owning relations. There are three types of this synthesis: with a predominance of the first, the second, or with a uniform ratio. The economic system of feudalism is characterized by the fact that the main means of production - land - is in the monopoly property of the ruling class of feudal lords, and the economy is run by the forces of small producers - peasants. The political structure of feudal society at different stages of its development is different: from the smallest state fragmentation to highly centralized absolutist monarchies. The late period of feudalism (the descending stage of its development as a system) is characterized, according to Marxism, by the emergence in its depths of manufactory production - the germ of capitalist relations and the time of the maturation and accomplishment of bourgeois revolutions.

Capitalism is a socio-economic formation replacing feudalism. Capitalism is based on private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of wage labor. The main contradiction of capitalism - between the social character of labor and the private capitalist form of appropriation - finds expression, according to Marxism, in the antagonism between the main classes of capitalist society - the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The culminating point of the class struggle of the proletariat is the socialist revolution.

Socialism and communism represent two phases of the communist formation: socialism is its first, or lowest, phase; communism is the highest phase. According to Marxist teaching, the difference is based on the degree of economic maturity. Even under socialism, private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of wage labor are absent. In this respect, there is no difference between socialism and communism. But under socialism, public ownership of the means of production exists in two forms: state and collective-farm-cooperative; under communism, however, there should be a single national property. Under socialism, according to Marxism, the differences between the working class, the collective farm peasantry and the intelligentsia, as well as between mental and physical labor, town and country, remain, and under communism disappear. At a certain stage in the development of communism, according to Marxist teaching, political and legal institutions, ideology, and the state as a whole will die out completely; communism will be the highest form of organization of society, which will function on the basis of highly developed productive forces, science, technology, culture and social self-government.