Their social existence is determined by consciousness. What, according to historical materialism, determines consciousness. Scientific and political significance

On behalf of Marxism (how else?) He declares in the crudest form, which does not tolerate objections, that the biblical “in the beginning was the word” and Marxist materialism are fundamentally incompatible things. That I, such and such an ignoramus, cannot connect: “An idea that has captured the masses becomes a material force” and “In the beginning was the word.” This, they say, is ridiculous and absurd. Following this comes a strong statement, which, apparently, is generated by the deepest understanding of Marxism, that all ideas are only reflections of material reality, and this crap is Marx’s materialism, which lies in the primacy of being before consciousness, read the famous being determines consciousness.

Friedrich Engels

Well, as I said above, here the murder of the idea is combined with Marx’s adherence to the fact that being determines consciousness, and being is thought of as matter from which reflections (and not ideas!) are extracted. So, consciousness is only a reflector of the material. How a person can carry out such a thing as labor is not clear... The main thing in this commentary is the liquidation formula - “Existence determines consciousness,” Marx said, and an idea is a reflection of being in consciousness.” This is enough for everything to die, and not just communism. Instead of an idea there is a representation, instead of being there is definitely understood matter. (I don’t have the opportunity to explain what “being” is, too.) All this crap is Marx’s great discovery. And whoever does not know this will... during the USSR times be subjected to one form or another of repression, but now... simply desecrated by the remaining pseudo-Marxists.

I think that the validity of the connection (or at least not the complete delusion of such a possibility) between the idea taking hold of the masses and the statement “in the beginning was the word” is understandable. The principle is the same. There is God (Logos), who sends an idea into matter (arche), from which the tree of life is born. Or there is a party that sends an idea to the people and gives birth to a state. The parallel is clear. By the way, Marx saw the party in precisely this role, and Lenin strengthened this role even more. That's sorted out.

We have already figured out that an idea is not a reflection of reality. Let us note that reflections of reality cannot master the masses... To master the masses, passion is needed. Feeling, love. A representation, unlike an idea, is completely devoid of these qualities. Even if you can broadcast an idea of ​​something into the minds of the masses, they will simply yawn and ask: so what? “Yes, we see - we are an oppressed class, but there is a bourgeois class, this and that... So what?” Even if you load the entire collection of Marx’s works into their heads, if this collection is just a performance, they will say: So what? They will say this because it is like science (and the Marxists in the USSR really wanted to be scientific) - science does not explain why, it explains the meaningless, which still needs to be given meaning. If you go to the left, you’ll lose your horse, to the right, you’ll lose your head... Yes, I understand, so what? This picture is given by science, and what to do with this picture is decided by the subject. The subject knows the answer to the question “why” and, based on this answer, turns either right, or left, or some other way. Ideas, unlike ideas, contain not only a picture, but also a direction with a “why” pointer and, most importantly, this “why” can be driven into the souls of people who listen to these ideas. Therefore, without ideas, no revolution is possible. You won't be satisfied with performances alone. And if matter also determines everything... Why bother?

And only now I will move on to what is stated in the title. Marx never said that being determines consciousness! Firstly, you won’t find such a quote... But you will find... That’s what I’ll do now! More precisely, this and what Marx actually said. This needs to be done in parallel. After all, this crap came from somewhere? Does she have some source? And there is also the truth of Marx. This needs to be considered at the same time, so that no idiot provocateur (here you can’t separate one from the other) will ever again make such a statement on behalf of Marx. Let Litvinova say this, or even Zyuganov, but not the Reds. And so let's go.

There is a work by Marx called “On Critique political economy" In it, he polemicizes with Hegel, or more precisely, with his philosophy of law. The essence of the controversy is that for Hegel, law and state forms are created by the world spirit, while Marx says that these forms are rooted in material relations, which Hegel calls “civil society.” The anatomy of this one civil society should be sought in political economy. This is the result Marx came to: I quote:

“In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - relations of production that correspond to a certain stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these industrial relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. The method of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general. It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with existing production relations, or - which is only the legal expression of the latter - with property relations within which they have hitherto developed. From forms of development of productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the era of social revolution. With a change in the economic basis, a revolution occurs more or less quickly in the entire enormous superstructure. When considering such revolutions, it is always necessary to distinguish the material revolution in the economic conditions of production, which is stated with natural-scientific precision, from legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophical, in short, from the ideological forms in which people are aware of this conflict and are fighting for its resolution. Just as one cannot judge an individual person on the basis of what he thinks about himself, in the same way one cannot judge such an era of revolution by its consciousness. On the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between social productive forces and production relations. Not a single social formation dies before all the productive forces for which it provides sufficient scope have developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the depths of the old society itself. Therefore, humanity always sets itself only such tasks that it can solve, since upon closer examination it always turns out that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present, or at least are in the process of becoming.”

Hegel

As we see, Marx here contrasts the Hegelian spirit with a certain alternative, which is not fully revealed here... We will reveal it a little, as far as possible within the framework of the article and as far as Marx reveals it himself. It is with this polemic in mind that they talk about the struggle between materialism and idealism. This conflict was aggravated by Engels, who wrote this in an article devoted to this work of Marx:

“Not for political economy alone, but for all historical sciences (and historical sciences are those that are not sciences of nature), it was a revolutionary discovery that “the method of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general,” that everything is public and state relations, all religious and legal systems, all theoretical views appearing in history, can be understood only when the material conditions of life of each corresponding era are understood and when everything else is deduced from these material conditions. “It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.” This proposition is so simple that it should be self-evident for anyone who is not mired in idealistic deception.”

And also there:

“The proposition that people’s consciousness depends on their being, and not vice versa, seems simple; however, upon closer examination it immediately becomes clear that this position, even in its first conclusions, deals a mortal blow to any, even the most hidden idealism. This position denies all inherited and customary views on everything historical. The whole traditional way of thinking politically is collapsing; patriotic good-heartedness rebels with indignation against such an impious view. The new worldview therefore inevitably encounters resistance not only from representatives of the bourgeoisie, but also from the mass of French socialists who want to turn the world upside down with the help of the magic formula: liberte, igalite, fraternite *. But this theory aroused especially great anger among the German vulgar-democratic loudmouths. And yet, they tried with great zeal to plagiarize new ideas, however, revealing a rare misunderstanding of them.”

After such comments by Engels, Marxism became not just materialistic, but, I would say, aggressively materialistic and aggressively anti-idealistic. A little later, being in specific political and other circumstances, largely determined by the aggravation we are considering, Lenin said that throughout the history of mankind, philosophical lines, marked by Plato and Democritus, have been fighting. Here I will only say that this is simply not true. It is not idealism that has been fighting against materialism throughout the entire history of mankind, but something completely different, another war of ideas is going on, one of the milestones of this struggle, by the way, is Marx’s polemic with Hegel, but as will be seen below, this is a struggle not of materialism and idealism, but of different ideas ( I don’t want to talk about idealism, but ideas, that’s for sure). With this statement, Vladimir Ilyich paved the way for those who later drove a nail into the coffin of Soviet ideology. Suslov and the Central Committee of the CPSU shouted about beautiful materialism and stifled any idealism, and various smart and educated creatures read quotes from Marx to less educated party members, after which they asked the question: Is this materialism or idealism? To which they received the answer that it was idealism. After which, with laughter, they continued to nourish and finish off at the same time Soviet ideology.

Before discussing Marx, let's talk a little about what Engels said. Engels sharpened politically and otherwise what was said by Marx in his polemic with Hegel. This was required by political and other circumstances. We see how Engels did this. We see that he placed the emphasis in such a way that the futility of any idealism became visible. Marx simply doesn’t have this! He wrote about something else! And to what extent this is not the case will be seen below. What does Engels say about this very being that determines consciousness? And what kind of reaction does he see to the message, which, let’s say... is read as “being determines consciousness”? Engels himself describes this reaction, and this reaction is as it should be to what I described above. I said that if an idea is killed at all, then everything on which humanity has lived collapses along with it. And this is precisely the reaction Engels records to his statements, which smell of something similar. Later, the communists would feel the wrongness and cost of the fight against idealism during the First World War, when they realized that the national turned out to be more important than the proletarian solidarity that they had so counted on. The problem of the national question will arise... There will be a split on this issue... And later questions will arise for the communists themselves. Like, communism wants to destroy everything that came before it, it is godless, anti-human... Postmodernization, first of all, of the European left movement... And all this comes out of the dispute around idealism. Why? Now I'll try to show you.

I will quote again: “The proposition that people’s consciousness depends on their being, and not vice versa, seems simple; however, upon closer examination it immediately becomes clear that this position, even in its first conclusions, deals a mortal blow to any, even the most hidden idealism. This position denies all inherited and customary views on everything historical. The whole traditional way of thinking politically is collapsing; patriotic good-heartedness rebels with indignation against such an impious view. The new worldview therefore inevitably encounters resistance not only from representatives of the bourgeoisie, but also from the mass of French socialists who want to turn the world upside down with the help of the magic formula: liberte, igalite, fraternite (freedom, equality, brotherhood, my note).”

Engels writes in black and white that there is a reaction to this “death blow to every idealism, even the most hidden one,” not only from the bourgeoisie, but, most importantly, from “patriotic good-heartedness.” It was this good-will that overpowered proletarian solidarity in the First World War. The French socialists are also up in arms! But what about Lenin with his three sources of Marxism, one of which is this very French socialism? True, this is another famous, but incorrect definition of Lenin, due to the political situation... Engels says that this reaction is caused by a blow to “even hidden idealism,” which destroys “all inherited and customary views on everything historical. The whole traditional way of thinking politically.” Well, if only this reaction wouldn’t have happened! The bourgeoisie... Well, it’s understandable. She is a reactionary class, this and that. But patriotic good-heartedness - read national - and French socialism are rebelling because if this blow to idealism is carried out to the end, then there will not only be no bourgeoisie, God bless them, but also national and ... there will be no freedom, equality and fraternity as ideas ! They will simply not be needed! For what? This is all idealism! Communism begins to degenerate into a redistribution of goods. Matter will do everything itself, without any idealism, you understand. It is necessary to hear a very important nuance in Engels’ words. He says: “The position that people’s consciousness depends on their being, and not vice versa.” Depends does not mean 100% determined! Engels doesn't say this! But he is heard exactly as if he were talking about 100% dependence, and rightly so, because Engels does not resist such an understanding of his own words. He fights with idealism, in particular with Hegel, and supports Marx in this endeavor. This is a political struggle that gives rise to excess. This inflection had to be corrected later somehow, but it was aggravated with catastrophic consequences. I do not blame Lenin and Engels for these excesses and definitions. They waged a struggle that justified them, but then it was necessary to develop ideology, in particular straightening out excesses, but instead... The catastrophe of the USSR, communism on the ideological, world-project sidelines, capitalism has mutated and is beginning to eliminate everything around, including itself, on a catastrophe is approaching the world... Well, okay, that’s not about that now.

So, let us note that Engels decided to finish off idealism, and since idealism in this case is equal to an idea, any idea, then all the bearers of any ideas became very tense. And then it turned out that nothing can be done on materialism and without ideality, but man is so constructed that he cannot do without ideality. As a result, in the USSR there was dead materialism surrounded by ideas, albeit hostile and even anti-human, but ideas. Naturally, they filled the vacuum. But you also need to understand that even Engels does not have a frank 100% conditionality. Others understood him this way, and he welcomed it. Like, the main thing is to destroy idealism. But Engels wanted to destroy specific idealism, in this case Hegelian, and decided to strike at idealism in general and ultimately committed suicide. When I get to Marx, this will become clearer, because Marx speaks about... idealism, and not in a derogatory way, but quite the opposite! It's just a different idealism...

But we must first consider Engels’ quote. In a part that we have not yet considered, Engels talks about the revolution that Marx’s approach brought about. But in commenting on it, Engels admits, I would say, a very dangerous negligence, which Marx does not have. This negligence further aggravated the situation of communism. He says that the essence of the discovery is that the mode of production of material life determines everything that the sciences do not study about nature. And they are historical sciences. And he says this exactly according to Marx. ATTENTION! He says: conditioning is related to the PRODUCTION of MATERIAL LIFE. And this is exactly according to Marx. In the future we will analyze what this is according to Marx. And then Engels casually writes: “when the material conditions of life of each corresponding era are understood and when everything else is deduced from these material conditions.” The first part of the phrase also coincides with Marx. Like, in order to understand spiritual life, you need to understand material life - everything is fine. But further... The production of material life is not the same as “material conditions”, and conditioning is not the same as the content of spiritual life can be deduced from this. If the content of spiritual life can be deduced from material conditions, and (I emphasize once again) not from the production of material life, then this is being that determines consciousness! If something is not 100% conditioned by something, then it cannot be deduced from what causes what is conditioned. The word “deduce” implies 100% conditionality. So, to some extent, “being determines consciousness” can be attributed to Engels. He really said a phrase that is identical in meaning to this very being that determines consciousness. And it sounds like this: “everything else is derived from these material conditions.” This is equal to “being determines consciousness.” What about Marx? Engels immediately quotes him, declaring the simplicity of what Marx meant. Oh, he shouldn’t have been so arrogant! For Marx said: “It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.” What did Marx say? What did he REALLY write, and not what Engels imagined? Marx added a very important adjective to the word being, he said about SOCIAL being! And this means that other forms of being are meant, to which a person may not be conditioned! This time! And also that we still need to look at what this social existence is. But what if this social being, although it determines consciousness, is itself determined by something that is related to human essence and at the same time is not conditioned by anything? And by the way, who said that a person is completely determined by consciousness? As it later became clear after Freud’s discoveries, there is also, for example, the unconscious... But Marx already has something that frees a person from ANY conditioning! And this something is called WORK! Marx will write about this. But let's finish with Engels.

So what have we got? It turned out that the phrase about being, which determines consciousness in the sense that a person is 100% determined by being, and being is matter, can be attributed to Engels, because he said this not literally, but in meaning. BUT! This will not be entirely accurate. For I have already said about Engels’ sloppiness. And we saw that in one sentence he understands the degree of conditioning and the quality of this conditioning in different ways. Here he quotes Marx, in whose quotations 100% is at least problematic. This is the sloppiness that Marx does not have. Therefore, in a sense, one has to guess what Engels really thought. Either he sharpened this for the tasks of a specific political struggle against Hegelian idealism (though Marx, without dealing with the ideal in general, completely dealt with Hegel), or he really thinks so, or... There is one more subjective circumstance, but this does not of a less significant order - Marx is a genius, but Engels is not. And this manifests itself, in particular, in the sloppiness I am discussing. The problem is that they began to read Engels with almost the same reverence as Marx. Plus, there was a political and other predetermination by this authority, and also... In short, now that the USSR is gone, there are no Central Committee workers, we must see in this situation, in addition to its horror, its possibilities. One of which is to calmly read and discuss Marxism. And then start developing it. This is what you need to use.

2.2. Historical materialism

In contrast to historical idealism, there arose geographical materialism (determinism), according to which the basic sphere of society, determining all others, was the geographical environment. This theory was based on the fact that people’s feelings and thoughts about other spheres of society and the social system depend on the geographical environment. Geographical materialism arose at the beginning of the 18th century. in the works of C. Montesquieu, and received its complete expression in the works of G. Buckle, E. Reclus and other thinkers in the 19th century.

So, for example, according to C. Montesquieu, the geographical environment affects the character and mentality of people, and through them the nature of the political structure of society and its other spheres. In hot countries, where there is a favorable climate, an abundance of food and where people do not have to fight for the basic means of subsistence, despotic societies in which some people force others to work. In European countries with cold climates, where you need to stock up on food, fuel, clothing, etc. for the winter, problems arise democratic society based on the natural labor activity of people and families. This point of view was refuted by comparative history, which revealed the existence of democracies and despotisms regardless of the nature of the geographical environment of societies.

Flaw this type of determinism was to consider human activity (and therefore consciousness) as passive

in relation to the geographical environment of the factor. Facts indicate that in the same geographical conditions different peoples live differently due to differences in their consciousness, division of labor and cooperation, and the efficiency of social production (compare Russia and Finland). The geographical environment provides incentives for the development of consciousness and activity of people, which turn out to be different different people, tribes, peoples.

This materialism can be called subjective, because its objective basis is formed by sensually perceived objects, and mentality, character, and a despotic political system are the result of the subjective perception of a variety of natural and social sensually objective things, material (natural and cultural) goods. These benefits are primary, and the individual and mass consciousness of people is secondary.

The name of Marx and Engels is associated with the creation historical (economic) materialism. In it, society was considered as a historically established system of human life. The main factors of its functioning and development are economic. Nature is primarily an object of labor, which society, with the help of developing technology, transforms into material wealth. Consciousness, and with it morality, religion, etc. were considered secondary, unimportant, dependent on material life: “It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.”

From the leading role of material production in society followed the decisive role of economic classes, their struggle as the driving force of social development in the post-primitive period, and subsequently the leading role of the proletariat in communist construction. The intelligentsia, the ruling (and educated) classes, social consciousness and spirituality were assigned a subordinate (superstructural) role. A myth was created about the proletariat as an analogue of the bourgeoisie in post-capitalist modernity. At the same time, it was not clear how a class that does not have economic, political, intellectual, moral superiority in society, and is primarily concerned with the problem of work, high earnings, short working hours, etc., can become the bearer of social progress. The possibility of integrating the proletariat into capitalism, the ability of capitalists to skillfully mitigate social conflicts, the predominance of

nationalist and religious interests over class ones, a decrease in the number of proletarians as a result of technological progress.

The economic approach to society was developed by Marx and historical materialists in the concept of the economic formation of society (EFS) or socio-economic formation (SEF). In historical materialism, OEF acts as a) a type of social organism, b) a stage of historical development of humanity, the basis of which is the economy (material production). Thus, if in historical idealism the center of society was the ruling elite, then in historical materialism this place is occupied by the economy. Using the term “economic formation of society,” Marx emphasizes that the life of society is determined primarily by economic factors, and not by religious, moral or political (state). Moreover, the main economic factor of society is ownership of the means of production.

Rice. 2. 1. Scheme of the economic formation of society, according to Marx

The economic formation, according to Marx, includes: 1) a superstructure (legal, political, forms of social consciousness), which is in a cause-and-effect relationship with the base; 2) the basis for the functioning and development of society is formed mode of production material goods (basis). He represents unity productive forces(people and means of production) and industrial relations(production, distribution, exchange,

consumption) and determines the social, legal, political, and spiritual life of society. Marx wrote in “Towards a Critique of Political Economy. Preface” (1859):

In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - relations of production that correspond to a certain stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these industrial relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond.

Marx's economic formation was, apparently, part of the social organism, and did not coincide with it.

Marx's merit is the discovery of the reasons for the development of the economic formation as part of society, which appear in the form of three main contradictions: 1) between the productive forces and the geographical environment; 2) between the level of the means of production and the production relations of people; 3) between the newly established type of production relations and the existing superstructural spheres (political, legal, ideological) - people, institutions, their activities and relationships. He speaks little and in an abstract form about the contradiction between the demosocial sphere, on the one hand, and economics, politics, and spirituality, on the other.

It is not social consciousness (conceptions, thoughts and ideas of people) that determine their social existence (material production), but on the contrary, social existence, primarily the development of the means of production, tools of labor, determines social consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, material productive forces come into conflict with the existing production relations of people, the legal expression of which is legally formalized property relations. The era of social revolutions is coming: the replacement of old production relations, forms of state, types of ideology, etc. for new ones. Not a single socio-economic formation will perish before new productive forces mature, and the old relations of production will no longer correspond to them. In this regard, humanity sets itself only those tasks that correspond to the available productive forces of society.

In “A Critique of Political Economy. Preface” (1859), Marx writes:

IN general outline Asian, ancient, feudal and modern, bourgeois, modes of production can be designated as progressive eras of economic social formation.

Marx makes a distinction between economic formation And way of producing material goods: within the framework of one economic formation, four methods of production of material goods and four eras are identified. The transition of humanity from one socio-economic formation to another was considered in Marxism-Leninism to be a natural historical process, i.e. independent of the consciousness and will of people, but determining their consciousness and will. It was proven that communism is a higher type of economic formation, and the transition from capitalism to communism is the most important pattern of the 20th century. In general, the scheme of periodization of formations depending on the method of material production looked like this:

The above-mentioned methods of production can be placed into three main eras of human history (not economic formation): 1) pre-class (primitive communal, non-economic); 2) class (slave, feudal, capitalist societies - economic); 3) classless (non-economic, communist, the first phase of which is socialism).

Marx believed that capitalist society would inevitably be replaced by communist society as a result of the proletarian-socialist revolution. This revolution will occur due to the fact that capitalist society will not be able to resolve its inherent contradictions in an evolutionary way. Marx and Engels believed that the capitalist formation within which they lived had reached the limit of its capabilities and that the proletarian-socialist revolution would soon come. But they were mistaken, as Engels was forced to admit at the end of his life.

Historical materialism excludes the possibility of a spontaneous path of historical development associated with the conscious choice of people. The fatal predetermination of the communist future made the development of humanity no alternative,

when the conscious choice of kings, generals, political elites, etc. played a completely insignificant role in the development of people. It was a reflection and expression of objective circumstances inherited by people from previous generations.

The material productive forces of society in historical materialism represent the final reason(driving force) of development economic formations. Among the elements of these forces, the main ones are tools.“The hand mill gives us a society with a sovereign, and the steam mill a society with industrial capital,” Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847).

Thus, it is not people with their needs and interests, but the material productive forces of society that act as the true subjects of the historical process in historical materialism.

Historical materialism can be called objective materialism, because its objective basis is not just the economy, the processes of production, distribution, exchange, consumption of material goods, but objective laws, underlying these processes, hidden from direct observation. These laws were actually put in the place of God and the Absolute Spirit of Hegel. Objective laws that operate beyond the consciousness and will of people are the following:

• material productive forces (the method of producing material goods) are the basis for the development of society;
• social existence determines social consciousness;
• relations of production must correspond to the forces of production;
• the driving force behind the development of antagonistic formations (slave, feudal, capitalist) is the class struggle;
• the driving force behind the transition from one formation to another is the social revolution as the highest form of class struggle, called by Marx the locomotive of history;
• the highest form of social revolution, according to Marx, is the proletarian-socialist one, which occurs in a group
• developed capitalist countries and leads to proletarian socialism, the first stage of the communist formation;
• The proletariat is the most advanced class, expresses the interests of all progressive humanity and is interested in the scientific analysis of social processes.

Due to the above, historical materialism was called science in contrast to historical idealism, which was considered

ideology (distorted consciousness). It was obvious that the above-mentioned “general sociological laws” differed from natural science laws, were not confirmed by social practice, and therefore could not be considered general sociological laws. Social practice in the form of the collapse of socialist society in the USSR became a historical fact, depriving historical materialism of the right to be “scientific.”

In historical materialism, like no other social philosophy, its ideological function.

Just as philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy.

Historical materialism turned out to be a genuine spiritual weapon of the proletariat, directed against the ability of the intelligentsia to think: under the conditions of the spiritual-ideological monopoly of historical materialism in the USSR, it acquired a dogmatic character, in which the ideological side became predominant to the detriment of the cognitive.

Scientific and technological revolution and its social consequences in the middle of the 20th century. contributed to the emergence of a technical (technical) direction in social philosophy. It can be called technological (and more subjective) materialism. This direction was developed in the works of T. Veblen, W. Rostow, D. Bell, J. Galbraith and others. These thinkers proceeded from the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century. Not only economic relations (property relations), but also technical (technological) relations, which have a serious impact on the efficiency of social production, the variety of products produced, and through them on all the main spheres of society, have come to the first place in terms of influence on public spheres.

For example, W. Rostow in his book “Stages of Economic Growth. Non-Communist Manifesto” considers the historical process depending only on the level of development of the productive forces. At the same time, he rejects Marx’s economic determinism, arguing that between the main spheres of society there are not only basic-superstructural, but also functional relations.

Historical materialism was subject to convincing criticism both during Marx's lifetime and during Soviet times. Famous French

social philosopher Raymond Aron believes that historical materialism is not a scientific theory because it

cannot be verified or refuted. When analyzing capitalism, it cannot be refuted by quantitative data, since it does not recognize them. When analyzing historical events he is again irrefutable because he ultimately explains and accepts them.

Here, the criterion for the scientific nature of a theory is its falsifiability (verifiability) by empirical facts. A theory that does not allow falsification does not impose any restrictions on the area of ​​phenomena it explains, in our case social, and has unlimited possibilities of explanation, which makes it unscientific. This also calls into question the objectivity of the laws of historical materialism.

K. Popper compared historical materialism with astrology, which also does not pay attention to empirical facts (examples) that are unfavorable to it. To avoid testability and refutation of their positions, the authors of these theories generally refuse to test their theories.

This is a common trick, writes K. Popper, of all soothsayers: to predict events so vaguely that the predictions always come true, i.e. so that they are irrefutable.

The eminent liberal economist and social philosopher Ludwig von Mises analyzed Hegelian and Marxian social philosophy (philosophy of history) as fatalistic. The famous French sociologist Alain Touraine criticizes historical materialism in the same spirit.

After Stalin's death, socio-economic formations began to be viewed as social organisms (societies), differing from each other like biological species. They began to believe that the basis of a socio-economic formation (and society) is formed by the method of production, the essence (basis) is represented by production relations, and the phenomenon is constituted by a political, legal, ideological superstructure.

Why has Marxism, in particular historical materialism, acquired such influence in the world? G. North believes that this was facilitated by the success of the October Revolution (1917), and then by socialist construction in Russia. Indeed, the popularity of Marx and Marxism even before the October Revolution was quite significant in Russia among the various intelligentsia. But

Only the success of the October Revolution and the construction of proletarian socialism in the USSR under the slogans of Marxism made Marx, Engels, Lenin and Marxist ideology in general worldwide popular.

The main practical argument against historical materialism turned out to be the proletarian-socialist revolution in Russia, which refuted the important provisions of Marxism that this revolution will occur in developed countries capitalism when capitalism has exhausted its possibilities there. Then the same argument became the collapse of Soviet socialism in the USSR and similar countries, their movement along the path of bourgeois socialism (democratic capitalism, social capitalism). He showed the inconsistency of the provisions of Marxism about the progressive role of the proletariat in the modern world and about communism as a result of its world-historical activity, etc. It is not possible to attribute the shortcomings of the theory to the mistakes of its executors (the Bolsheviks): social practice is the criterion of the truth of the theory in historical materialism. The great experiment with proletarian socialism, social equality, better life for everyone, etc. did not take place. He did not give people the quality and life expectancy that modern social capitalism gave, although for a long time he promised to do this better and earlier than capitalism (see the third program of the CPSU).

Historical materialism is characteristic of the political formation of society, of collectivist civilization, of the industrial era, of the era of proletarian crowds. It became the spiritual weapon of the proletariat engaged in the material production of the industrial era of humanity. Historical materialism was developed by intellectuals of the industrial era who took the position of the proletariat. Thus, historical (Marxist-Leninist) materialism is the opposite of historical idealism and develops another socio-philosophical paradigm (system of fundamental principles). Thus, it significantly complements historical idealism, showing the role of the objective factor in history, social existence in the development of social consciousness.

Being determines consciousness... Many people have heard this expression. It was first used in the works of Karl Marx. However, even before this philosopher, Hegel also had similar thoughts. Let's try to understand the essence of this expression.

Every person is conditioned to one degree or another. A child is greatly influenced by his environment. This is how basic principles, opinions, judgments, and life attitudes are instilled. It is worth remembering that a person cannot be completely autonomous. Social existence and have a huge impact on everyone's life. A person largely depends on the environment in which he exists. Taken together, all material aspects of life (environment, work, etc.) constitute the Consciousness of a person - this is the spiritual side of existence, that is, thoughts, convictions, beliefs, principles, etc.

The expression “being determines consciousness” implies that the living conditions of an individual directly influence his thinking. There is no doubt that a millionaire and a person without a fixed place of residence think differently. The vast majority of people are unable to rise above the peculiarities of their existence and look at life objectively. Philosophers cope with this task most successfully.

Confirmation of the thesis “being determines consciousness” can easily be found in our modern world. For example, for some, it is absolutely normal to marry a girl under sixteen years old. For most developed countries, this fact is unacceptable.

In past centuries, slavery was widespread. This fact was considered absolutely normal and everyday. For a modern person, the use of slaves as labor seems wild.

The converse is also true. determines his existence. That is, the development of personality in material aspects depends on how the individual thinks, what priorities and goals he sets for himself. The opposite thesis can be easily proven using simple ones. If only being determined consciousness, humanity would stop in its development. There would be no global changes in the world. However, we see a different picture. With the growth of humanity's consciousness, the world changes and transforms. People increase, more respect is shown for the interests of the individual, tolerance and tolerance become important qualities of the individual.

However, despite all the positive changes in the world, there are still certain problems of existence. Human life, relative to the past and future of the entire earth, is negligibly short. But one way or another, the overwhelming majority of individuals had to think about the further development of the world around us and its current problems. The questions facing philosophers trying to comprehend existence are many and varied. However, the mere fact that people think about such abstract problems allows us to say that human consciousness does not cease to change. And this, according to the opposite thesis stated above, leads to the transformation of an already existing being.

To summarize, it can be noted that the expression “being determines consciousness” indicates that human thinking is quite subjective. It does not stand “above” the surrounding reality, but is directly dependent on it. However, human consciousness is constantly evolving, trying to rise “above” existence, and this leads to changes throughout the world. Most often, such transformations are evolutionary rather than revolutionary in nature. That is, they occur slowly, but their entry into daily life a person is almost irreversible.

Materialistic understanding of history.

The essence of this brilliant teaching is simple.

People differ from animals in that they no longer find their means of life ready-made in nature, but are forced to produce them. People can only produce together. Even Robinson was able to survive only because he had at his disposal tools made by other people, and he himself managed to learn something from other people before the shipwreck. By producing collectively, people, whether they want it or not, are forced to enter into relationships with other participants in this production process. We are talking not only and not so much about direct relations determined by production technology, but also about no less important indirect relations - say, relations between the exchange of the products of one’s labor and the corresponding social support for this exchange. Of course, these relationships do not at all depend on the will and consciousness of people. They develop historically, and each individual finds them already in a ready-made form. And these relations depend mainly on the level of development of the productive forces that are at the disposal of a given society at a given historical moment. Here's how Karl Marx himself writes about it:

“In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - relations of production that correspond to a certain stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these production relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. The method of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general. It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.” (K. Marx. Towards a critique of political economy. Preface. K. Marx, F. Engels. Works. 2nd ed., vol. 13, pp. 6-7.)

This mathematically precise scheme of social development was not invented by Marx; it is a result, a conclusion, a summary, a dialectical generalization of the entire history of mankind. But in order to draw this conclusion, it was not enough to know history. She needed to be understood. The basis of this understanding was philosophical materialism, the doctrine that it is not consciousness that determines the existence of people, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. But the material social existence of people is many-sided and varied. It was necessary to grasp that main link in the entire endless chain of causes and consequences of human existence, which determines all other links and the life of society as a whole. Marx and Engels consider the collective activity of man to produce his own means of life as such a basic link. Thus, political economy - the science of relationships between people in the production process - becomes the key to understanding the driving forces of social development under capitalism and in the conditions of commodity relations in general. In fact, Marxism is a critique of political economy from the point of view of materialist dialectics. Those laws that the classics of bourgeois political economy discovered, but considered as natural, natural, eternal, Marx proposes to consider as historically developed, characteristic exclusively of one historical phase - capitalism, that is, under certain conditions, emerging, and under other conditions, disappearing.

Since people act in society, divided into economic classes, whose interests not only do not converge, but are diametrically opposed (some are interested in maintaining existing relations, while others are interested in changing them), this process takes the form of an antagonistic contradiction, that is, such a contradiction, which can only be resolved by the destruction of one of its parties or the destruction of both. It - the contradiction between classes - must be distinguished from the internal contradiction of social development - the contradiction of productive forces and production relations. Class antagonism is only a form of manifestation of the contradiction of productive forces and production relations, moreover, characteristic only of one era of human history - the era of relations of domination and subordination. Class antagonism did not exist in primitive society, it will not exist under communism, and the contradiction of productive forces and production relations has always been and will be as long as there is a person, but it will be resolved in other, non-antagonistic forms. But as long as classes exist, social development is impossible without class contradictions and social revolutions.

“At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with existing production relations, or, which is only the legal expression of the latter, with the property relations within which they have hitherto developed.

From forms of development of productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the era of social revolution. With a change in the economic basis, a revolution occurs more or less quickly in the entire enormous superstructure. When considering such revolutions, it is always necessary to distinguish the material revolution, ascertained with natural scientific precision, in the economic conditions of production from the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophical, in short, from the ideological forms in which people are aware of this conflict and are fighting for its resolution.

Just as one cannot judge an individual person on the basis of what he thinks about himself, in the same way one cannot judge such an era of revolution by its consciousness. On the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between social productive forces and production relations" (K. Marx. On the Critique of Political Economy. - Preface. K. Marx, F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed. vol. 13, p. 7).

An example of an idealistic approach to solving social problems is the belief that if we pass good (socialist) laws, socialism will be established. But in fact, as long as capitalist relations of production dominate, even the most socialist laws will only serve to preserve these relations. In essence, any law is bourgeois law. But under the dictatorship of the proletariat it serves to destroy bourgeois relations and establish socialism. In the same way, under the conditions of the dominance of capitalism in the economic basis, the most socialist-looking laws will remain only good wishes and will be aimed at the benefit of the bourgeoisie and to the detriment of the working class.

An equally striking example is the analysis by various political forces of the features of the modern era. Liberals appeal to a sense of property, and in order to develop this feeling among citizens, the vast majority of them had to be deprived of real property only because it existed in a slightly different form, was not capitalist. Nationalists are trying not only to slow down the course of history, but also to turn it back, sacrificing real representatives of their current nation in the name of “shadows of forgotten ancestors.” The saddest thing is that often communists, instead of a concrete historical analysis of the state of productive forces and production relations, an assessment of the existing balance of class forces in society, as a final argument in favor of socialism, put forward abstract principles such as “social justice”, “social security”, “ strengthening statehood”, “patriotism” and similar good wishes.

Of course, the scheme for analyzing the historical development of society proposed by Marx is of a general nature and cannot serve as a recipe for each individual case; truth is always concrete. Yes, and this was written for the era of revolutions, but today we are dealing with the reverse process.

But the counter-revolution also cannot be judged by the ideological forms that it has developed: some consider the cause of the counter-revolution to be the betrayal of leaders and leaders, while others argue that it is human nature to change their views: a fish, they say, looks for something deeper, but a person... changes his views . It won’t take long to slide to the point of view according to which revolution and counter-revolution are fundamentally no different from each other. First some took power, then others. I’m not saying that nothing can be understood this way, if only because the personalities in power in many former Soviet republics and the socialist countries immediately after the coup remained the same. And this is no coincidence. Counter-revolution is not at all an independent phenomenon. As Hegel would say, it has no essence of its own. Counter-revolution is a product of revolution, its “childhood disease”. No revolution can do without it. The analogy with a childhood illness is all the more suitable here, since counter-revolution, like most childhood illnesses, the later in age it occurs, the more dangerous it is.

Socialism is the transition from capitalism to communism, the struggle of the new with the old. That is, by its nature it is a revolution. Not one-time, political, but continuous and in all spheres of society. The destruction of the old here cannot be stopped even for a minute, since this threatens to go back and destroy the new. Here you cannot wait until the productive forces have developed to a certain level and then change production relations. Here the opposite is true; the movement towards communism can only be ensured by constantly looking ahead in the field of production relations in comparison with the development of the productive forces. For a very long time after the revolution, the party acted this way. Only due to this, the country, whose productive forces before the revolution were rather a mixture of patriarchy and semi-colonial capitalism, in the shortest possible time turned into one of the most advanced industrial countries in the world, and in terms of the level of education and culture of the population it left far behind its imperialist competitors. Organization of the economy and all public life on a planned, rather than market basis, made it possible in the shortest possible time not only to eliminate the gap in the level of development of productive forces inherited from tsarist Russia between the USSR and the leading capitalist countries, but also to twice raise the economy from almost zero post-war levels. The enthusiasm of Soviet people is not a moral category, but a political-economic one. This is the energy of human creative forces, freed from the shackles that capitalist social relations impose on them. And the enthusiasm continued while this relationship was being destroyed. It was necessary to stop at least for a short time on what had been achieved, and the enthusiasm cooled down. Collectivization and industrialization, the cultural revolution were accompanied by unprecedented enthusiasm, because they tore Russia, which was predominantly rural, out of the centuries-old darkness of a semi-animal existence “from harvest to harvest” (the urban version - from salary to advance payment) and opened up a fantastic development prospect for millions of people. It was not about a career, not about getting a warm place, it was about a breakthrough into the future, which no one had dared to dream about before. All paths were open to any person; you just had to want it and everything could be achieved. And this entire unprecedented revolution was organized by the workers and peasants themselves. This prospect was worth fighting for. That is why the crushing defeats of 1941 caused not panic among the people, but a new surge of enthusiasm. The almost completely destroyed army, having lost more than half of its military equipment, after a fairly short time not only restored its pre-war power, but turned out to be many times stronger than the enemy. But this was a “war of engines”, it was won not only by the army, but also by industry organized on socialist principles, which provided not just a lot of equipment, but also a lot of completely new equipment.

And it is not true that enthusiasm existed only in the thirties and during the war years. The enthusiasm of the Soviet people continued for a long time. Perhaps the first major blow to Soviet enthusiasm was the refusal to fulfill the promise written in the party program to build communism in the Soviet Union by the 1980s. This was historical cowardice, it was a betrayal of the revolution. The question was not whether it was written down correctly or incorrectly. But once it was written down, it had to be done. There would have been a completely different demand if everything had been done to fulfill what was written down, but for some reason it didn’t work out. Instead, the party did not even bother to explain to the people why the central program provision was not being implemented. In other words, the transition to communism written in the program was simply talked about and released on the brakes.

However, there were some explanations, and we will now dwell on them. It is very noteworthy that this explanation belongs not just to a philosopher, but to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR A.N. Kosygin, who is considered the inspirer of the so-called economic reform of 1965, which significantly strengthened the role of market elements in our economy. This argumentation was included in the textbook on historical materialism for the party education system, and its essence was that even if we are able to build the material and technical base of communism in the near future, then the consciousness of people is not yet communist at all. Therefore, the transition to communism, they say, must be postponed for now. This, at first glance, indisputable idea is in fact deeply anti-dialectical, idealistic, and, therefore, anti-Marxist and, at least in a philosophical sense, counter-revolutionary. How could a socialist revolution have happened if Lenin and the Bolsheviks thought this way? After all, then, in 1917, there could be no talk of mass socialist consciousness.

Communist consciousness is widespread and could not have emerged without communist practice. Even communists form their consciousness not from books about communism, but in real party work. If this is communist work - that is, the struggle for the destruction of old, private property relations, then even a semi-literate peasant who cannot even read a newspaper acquires a communist consciousness in this work. The struggle will form in him the need to read newspapers and study science. And, on the contrary, if party work ceases to be a struggle for the abolition of private property relations, and becomes something else, then even the most highly learned intellectuals, who have read Marx inside and out, cease to have a communist consciousness, and they become stupid before our eyes, because , by and large, today a person who is not a Marxist, that is, a communist, cannot be smart (reasonable).

The existence of people determines their consciousness, and not vice versa. We cannot wait until communist consciousness is formed, and then we will move on to communism. The so-called material and technical basis of communism without new relations, that is, without the abolition of private property relations, does not lead to communism at all, but leads away from it. Americans today consume so much that, with a reasonable organization of production and consumption, it would be enough, if not for the entire population of the earth, then for sure for half. But no people today are as far from communism as the Americans.

The most offensive thing is that not even a few decades had passed before history laughed in the most cruel way at our indecision at that time. We were afraid that people would not have enough consciousness to work without material stimulation, and after perestroika, for a year or two, the overwhelming majority of our population had to work either without a salary at all, or for a salary that did not even approximately provide physical survival with the almost complete disappearance of public consumption funds. It turns out that working for free for the bourgeoisie is enough “consciousness”, but would not be enough for yourself?

Not the least role in the party’s inability to make bold and timely decisions was played by the fact that most of the leaders turned out to be theoretically unprepared; they did not think in a Marxist way, but as God dictated. Lenin wrote as an aphorism in his “Philosophical Notebooks”: “One cannot fully understand Marx’s Capital and especially its first chapter without studying and understanding all Hegel's logic. Consequently, none of the Marxists understood Marx 1/2 century later!!” (Lenin V.I. “Philosophical notebooks.” Lenin V.I. vol. 29, p. 162). Over the next 5/6 centuries, entire generations of Marxists grew up who never intended to study not only Hegel, but also Marx. But we acted in conditions about which nothing was written in textbooks, we solved problems that no one had ever solved. In such cases, Lenin turned for advice to Marx and... Hegel, who, in his words, “brilliantly guessed the dialectic of things... in the dialectic of concepts.” It is no coincidence that in the most difficult times for the party (1907 - the years of reaction after the revolution of 1905 and 1915 - the imperialist war), he studied philosophy. It was then that Lenin worked on “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism” and “Philosophical Notebooks”. In this work, Lenin's dialectical thinking was forged and the thinking of the party was tempered.

The leaders of the CPSU of recent decades considered themselves “above this”; they had their own thinking. The entire yesterday great people and everyone who believed in him have to pay a very high price for this frivolity.

In the end, I would like to give one more quote from Engels, where he talks about scientists, but everything that has been said can be fully applied to all communists, both yesterday, present and future:

“Natural scientists imagine that they are freed from philosophy when they ignore or scold it. But since they cannot move a single step without thinking, thinking requires logical categories, and they uncritically borrow these categories either from the everyday general consciousness of so-called educated people, over whom the remnants of long-dead philosophical systems dominate, or from the crumbs heard in compulsory university courses in philosophy (which represent not only fragmentary views, but also a hodgepodge of views of people belonging to the most diverse and, for the most part, the worst schools), or from uncritical and unsystematic reading of all kinds of philosophical works - then in in the end, they still find themselves subordinate to philosophy, but, unfortunately, for the most part the worst, and those who scold philosophy the most are slaves of precisely the worst vulgarized remnants of the worst philosophical teachings...

Whatever position natural scientists take, philosophy rules over them. The only question is whether they want to be dominated by some bad philosophy, or whether they want to be guided by a form of theoretical thinking that is based on acquaintance with the history of thinking and its achievements.” (F. Engels. Dialectics of nature. K. Marx, F. Engels. Works. 2nd ed., vol. 20, pp. 524-525.)

Today, only Marxism continues to remain such a form of theoretical thinking, and any attempts to replace it with something else: “patriotism”, “Kara-Murzism” or other fashionable surrogates of thinking cannot but lead to more and more defeats.

Conversely, mastering the dialectical method of thinking fully developed by Marxism will give the modern revolutionary movement such a weapon that will allow it to overcome all obstacles on the path to victory over the forces of capital.

The views in it. For class societies, the presence of classes is reflected in the superstructure in the form of the existence of social structures associated with the relationship of classes to the means of production and expressing the interests of these classes. The superstructure is secondary, dependent on the base, but has relative independence and can, in its development, either correspond to the base, or advance or lag behind it, thus stimulating or inhibiting the development of society.

In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - production relations that correspond to a certain stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these production relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. The method of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general. It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.

K. Marx. “Toward a critique of political economy.” Preface

The relations of antagonistic classes are determined by the existence of surplus value - the difference between the cost of production products and the cost of the resources used to create them, which includes the cost of labor, that is, the remuneration received by the worker in one form or another. It turns out that it is non-zero: the worker, through his labor, adds more value to the raw material (turning it into a product) than he receives back in the form of remuneration. This difference is appropriated by the owner of the means of production, who thus exploits the worker. It is this appropriation, according to Marx, that is the source of income for the owner (that is, in the case of capitalism, capital).

Change of formation

As a socio-economic formation, transitional from capitalism to communism, it is considered socialism, in which the means of production are socialized, but commodity-money relations, economic compulsion to work and a number of other features characteristic of a capitalist society are preserved. Under socialism, the principle is implemented: “From each according to his abilities, 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”, “ancient” and “Germanic”. However, this development of Marx’s views was later ignored in the USSR, where only one orthodox version of historical materialism was officially recognized, according to which “five socio-economic formations are known to history: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist”

To this we must add that in the preface to one of his main early works on this topic: “Towards a critique of political economy,” Marx mentioned the “ancient” (as well as the “Asiatic”) mode of production, while in other works he (as well as Engels) wrote about the existence in antiquity of a “slave 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 had been preserved throughout Europe since primitive times.

Criticism of the provisions of historical materialism

Methodological criticism

The main methodological statement of historical materialism is the thesis about the primacy of the “base” (economic relations) over the “superstructure” (politics, ideology, ethics, etc.), since, according to Marx, it is economic needs that have a decisive influence on the behavior of most people. Modern sociology and social psychology dispute this thesis, in particular, the Hawthorne experiment showed that self-realization and socialization of workers in the work team are no less powerful incentives for increasing labor productivity than purely material incentives.

Historical criticism

During the 20th century, some elements of the historical teaching of Marx-Engels were criticized. For example, M. Finley in his book analyzed the opinions of a number of Western historians of antiquity on the issue of slavery and came to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of them do not share the Marxist view of the existence of a “slave mode of production” in the ancient world.

These opinions of historians are based on facts described in a number of historical works. So, according to the data cited in their works by historians Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev, A.Kh.M. Jones, A. Grenier, Ed Mayer, the number of slaves in antiquity in proportion to the total population was not significant (with the exception of Italy during the “heyday” of slavery, where the ratio of slaves to free was estimated to be 1 to 2-2.5 ) and that in general they played a relatively small role both in the economy and in social conflicts (see below), and in the last 3-4 centuries of antiquity, when their number sharply decreased, this role became insignificant (see Slavery in Ancient Rome). As for early antiquity and more ancient times, as historian Ed Mayer wrote in his work “On Slavery in Antiquity,” the number of slaves and their role in those eras were no higher than in the Frankish kingdoms in the early Middle Ages. In the Hellenistic world, during the “heyday” of slavery (5th century BC), according to the historian, slavery existed only in large industrial centers (Corinth, Athens, Syracuse), and in the depths of Greece and in other territories it was almost non-existent was. In many examples, the historian writes, slavery as such did not exist at all, or it was conditional: for example, peoples taken “into slavery” by the Assyrians and Babylonians lived in a new place in the same conditions as local residents, and some of these peoples managed to get rich in the process.

At the same time, the historian of antiquity P. Brant pointed out that in the English colonies of Central America in New history slaves made up on average 86% of the population, which had never happened in antiquity. In addition, the demand for the abolition of slavery became the cause of the American Civil War in 1861-1865; in Haiti at the end of the 18th century, writes historian L. Langley, a “revolution of slaves” took place and a “republic of slaves” was formed, which subsequently continued to exist. And in Ancient Rome, writes the historian of antiquity S. Nicolet, slave uprisings were a common occurrence only at the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st centuries. BC e., subsequently, when Roman civil wars took place, slaves did not take a noticeable part in them. Even in the uprising of Spartacus, the historian writes, slaves played main role only at the beginning. Subsequently, according to the testimony of ancient authors, many poor free proletarians joined the army of Spartacus, and then, the historian points out, the uprising was supported by the cities of the Latin allies, who rebelled against the power of Rome. With the exception of only one period of the late Roman Republic (late 2nd - early 1st centuries BC), Nicolet concludes, the main social conflicts in ancient society took place not between freemen and slaves, but between other classes and groups. Other historians of antiquity, who specifically studied the issue of slavery in their works, came to similar conclusions. Thus, Ed Mayer wrote that during the era of the Roman Empire the problem of slavery no longer existed, and slave uprisings did not have any serious significance. As A. H. M. Jones pointed out, the number of slaves in ancient Rome during the imperial era was proportionally negligible, they were very expensive and were almost not used in agriculture and crafts, serving mainly as domestic servants for the rich Romans. In the middle of the 20th century, the famous historian of antiquity M.I. Rostovtsev stated that the general remarks of Marx and Engels about the “slave society” have long been refuted.

At the same time, the historian of antiquity M. Finley, having analyzed the works of Marx, came to the conclusion that Marx wrote only a few pages on the topic of slavery in antiquity, and that neither he nor Engels ever undertook any serious study of ancient societies or economics ancient civilizations.

Many historians of antiquity wrote that the ancient era was the era of capitalism. Thus, Ed Mayer believed that in the era of antiquity, humanity passed the capitalist stage of development, and it was preceded by the “Middle Ages.” M.I. Rostovtsev believed that the difference between the modern capitalist economy and the capitalist economy of antiquity is purely quantitative, but not qualitative, and wrote that in terms of the level of development of capitalism, antiquity is comparable to Europe in the 19th-20th centuries.

New historical facts have cast doubt on Marx’s assertions that all primitive peoples lived under a “primitive communal system.” For example, it was found that almost all the Indians of North America before the arrival of Europeans there existed slavery in one form or another. For some North American Indians, slaves made up a quarter of the tribe's inhabitants, and some tribes were actively involved in the slave trade. (See Native American Slavery (English)) At the same time, the North American Indians did not have states; they lived in tribes.

A similar example is the Anglo-Saxons in the first century after their resettlement to England (which occurred in the middle of the 5th century AD). As English historians point out, they did not yet have a state, they lived in communities (or clans) of approximately 5-10 “ houses" in each community, and the material conditions of life approached "primitive". But despite this, slavery was widespread among them: the slaves were captive Celts, who, as historians J. Nelson and H. Hamerow write, were among the Anglo-Saxons in large numbers, comparable to the number of the Anglo-Saxons themselves.

In addition, new facts established by historians have cast doubt on another hypothesis used by Marx to justify the “primitive communal system.” Thus, Marx believed that the peasant community in Russia had been preserved “since primitive times,” which he used as one of the main arguments to substantiate his view, and also argued that the community everywhere in Europe had been preserved “since primitive times.” Later, historians established that initially there was no community in Russia; it first appeared only in the 15th century, and spread everywhere in the 17th century. The same applies, for example, to the peasant community in Byzantium: as Byzantine historians have established, it appeared only in the 7th-8th centuries and existed until the 10th-11th centuries. The same is the story of the emergence of the community among the Germans. Marx himself admitted (with reference to Tacitus and other ancient authors) that it appeared among the Germans only in the 1st century, and by the end of the 4th century it had completely disappeared from them.

The opinions of a number of historians question the position of historical materialism that in history a less progressive mode of production is always replaced by a more progressive one. For example, according to the opinion of a number of historians, the “dark ages” that came in the VI-IX centuries. to replace antiquity, were accompanied by the decline of civilization in the territory Western Europe and the spread of more primitive social and economic relations (while the postulates of historical materialism argued the opposite).

The English historian Charles Wilson wrote that historical facts do not fit into Marx’s “rigid historical scheme”, so the objective historian faces a dilemma - “either abandon this scheme, or make it so free and broad that it will lose all meaning except the semantic one.” .

Scientific and political significance

Historical materialism has had a huge influence on the development of historical and social sciences throughout the world. Although much of the historical heritage of Marxism has been criticized or questioned by historical facts, some provisions have retained their significance. For example, it is generally accepted that history has recorded several stable “socio-economic formations” or “modes of production”, in particular: capitalism, socialism and feudalism, which differed from each other primarily in the nature of economic relations between people. There is no doubt about Marx's conclusion about the importance of economics in the historical process. It was the postulates of Marxism about the primacy of economics over politics that contributed to the rapid development of economic history as an independent branch of historical science in the 20th century.

In the USSR since the 1930s. and until the end of the 1980s. historical materialism was part of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. As historians R. A. Medvedev and Zh. A. Medvedev write, in the early 1930s in Soviet historical science “a process of the most brutal falsification, strictly directed from above, began to be carried out... History became part of ideology, and ideology, which was now officially called “Marxism” -Leninism“, began to turn into a secular form of religious consciousness...” According to sociologist S.G. Kara-Murza, Marxism in the USSR became “a closed dialectic, a catechism.”

Some of the provisions of historical materialism - about the slave-owning mode of production, about the primitive communal system as universal for all “primitive” peoples before the formation of their state, about the inevitability of the transition from less progressive to more progressive methods of production - are questioned by historians and historical facts. The views on the existence of stable “socio-economic formations”, or typical socio-economic systems, characterized by a certain nature of economic and social relations between people, as well as the fact that the economy plays an important role in the historical process, are confirmed.

see also

Notes

1. “It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”
2. “In general terms, Asian, ancient, feudal and modern, bourgeois, modes of production can be designated as progressive eras of economic social formation.”- K. Marx. "Toward a critique of political economy." Preface
3. K. Marx Capital. - T. 1. - P. 198-206.
4. Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 30, p. 420
5. With the introduction of a socialist social system, the state itself dissolves and disappears.<…>[The worker] receives from society a receipt stating that they have delivered such and such a quantity of labor (minus the deduction of his labor for the benefit of public funds), and according to this receipt he receives from the public reserves such a quantity of consumer goods for which the same amount of labor was expended.<…>When, along with the all-round development of individuals, the productive forces also grow, and all sources of social wealth flow in full flow, only then will it be possible to completely overcome the narrow horizon of bourgeois law, and society will be able to write on its banner: To each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! "(To .Marx "Critique of the Gothic Program")
6. Marx K., Engels F. Soch., 2nd ed., M., 1955-1961. vol. 48, p. 157, vol. 46/I, pp. 462-469, 491
7. Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 30, p. 420
8. “In Europe, over the course of 3,000 years, three different social order, primitive communal system, slave system, feudal system"; “The slave system existed in the advanced countries of that time in Asia, Europe and Africa until the 3rd-5th centuries. AD" Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., vol. 19, p. 19; vol. 35, p. 421
9. Marx K., Engels F., Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 13, p. 7
10. Finley M. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, NY, 1980, pp. 40-41
11. Marx K., Engels F., Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 19, p. 417, 401, vol. 13, p. 20
12. Gillespie, Richard Manufacturing knowledge: a history of the Hawthorne experiments. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
13. Finley M. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, NY, 1980, pp. 29-94
14. Rostovtsev, in a study of the early Roman Empire (Rostovtsev M.I. Society and economy in the Roman Empire. St. Petersburg, 2000) pointed out that there were almost no slaves in the Balkans and in the Danube provinces (vol. 1, pp. 212-226), in Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor (vol. 2, pp. 5-35), in Roman Africa (vol. 2, pp. 54-58). The historian Grenier wrote that there were almost no slaves in Roman Gaul (A.Grenier. La Gaule Romaine. In: Economic Survey of Ancient Rome. Baltimore, 1937, Vol. III, p. 590)
15. Brunt P. Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.-A.D.14. Oxford, 1971, pp. 4, 121-124
16. Thus, Rostovtsev in his book indicates that slaves did not play a significant role in the agriculture of Roman Africa and Egypt (Rostovtsev M.I. Society and economy in the Roman Empire. St. Petersburg, 2000, pp. 57, 18). Meanwhile, it was precisely these two provinces, in which two harvests were collected per year, that ensured the main production of bread in the empire. Both Rome and other large cities received supplies of grain almost exclusively from these two provinces (Rickman G. The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome. Oxford, 1980). Thus, in this largest industry of the Roman Empire, slave labor was used almost never or only on a small scale.
17. Meyer E. Kleine Schriften. Halle, 1924. Bd. 1, s. 187
18. Meyer E. Kleine Schriften. Halle, 1924. Bd. 1, s. 198, 192
19. Brunt P. Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.-A.D.14. Oxford, 1971, p. 703
20. Langley L. The Americas in the Age of Revolution, New Haven and London, 1996, pp. 85-140
21. Rome et la conquete du monde mediterraneen, ed. par C.Nicolet. Paris, 1979, volume 1, p. 226
22. Meyer E. Kleine Schriften. Halle, 1924. Bd. 1, p. 210
23. Jones A. The Death of the Ancient World. Rostov-on-Don, 1997, p. 424-425
24. Rostovtseff M. The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World. Oxford, 1941, Vol. III, p.1328
25. Finley M. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, NY, 1980, p. 41
26. See, for example: F. Lot, La fin du monde antique et le debut du moyen age. Paris, 1968, pp. 72-73; G. Glotz, Histoire greque, t. 3, Paris, 1941, p. 15; G. Salvioli, Le capitalisme dans le monde antique, Paris, 1906
27. Ed. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, Halle, 1924 Bd. 1, S. 99-130
28. Zeitschrift fuer die Gesammte Staatwissenschaften, 92, 1932, S.334-335; M. Rostovtsev. Society and economy in the Roman Empire. St. Petersburg, 2000, vol. 1, p. 21
29. See also: All the wars of world history, according to the Harper's Encyclopedia military history R. Dupuis and T. Dupuis with comments by N. Volkovsky and D. Volkovsky. St. Petersburg, 2004, book 3, p. 236-241
30. World History: In 24 volumes. A. Badak, I. Voynich, N. Volchek and others, Minsk, 1997-1999, vol. 12, p. 7-19
31. New Cambridge Medieval History. Cambridge, 2005, Vol. I, pp. 274-276; Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge, 2d. ed., 2000, Vol. XIV p. 352
32. Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England, ed. by N. Saul. Oxford, 1997, p. 29; New Cambridge Medieval History. Cambridge, 2005, Vol. I, pp. 265-266
33. Marx K., Engels F., Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 19, pp. 411-417, 401; vol. 13, p. 20
34. Blum J. Lord and Peasant in Russia. From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1964, pp. 510-512
35. Litavrin G. Byzantine society and state in the X-XI centuries. Problems of the history of one century: 976-1081. Moscow, 1977
36. Marx K., Engels F., Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 19, p. 417
37. See, for example: Lot F. La fin du monde antique et le debut du moyen age. Paris, 1968; Hodges R., Whitehouse D. Mohammed, Charlemagne and The Origins of Europe. Oxford, 1983; Lopez R. The Birth of Europe. London, 1967
38. Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Cambridge, 1977, Vol. V, pp. 5-6
39. As the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "Economic System" states, "One might imagine that there were a large number of such systems corresponding to the cultural diversity that characterizes human society. Surprisingly, this is not the case... In fact, history has produced only three types of economic systems - those based on tradition, those based on command (and... in which the central organizing form is the market." The article goes on to discuss three types of economic systems - "primitive" systems, "market - capitalist" systems and "central planning - socialist" systems. Economic System. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2005
40. Medvedev R., Medvedev J. Unknown Stalin. Moscow, 2007, p. 166
41. Kara-Murza S. Soviet civilization. From the beginning to the present day. Moscow, 2008, p.435
42. Economic System. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2005

Literature

• M. Insarov“Towards a theory of knowledge of historical materialism” - an essay on the history of the epistemology of historical materialism.
• Yu. I. Semenov“Philosophy of History” // “Modern Notebooks”, 2003 - the largest theoretical work in the field of historical materialism
• Yu. I. Semenov"Introduction to world history" - the book contains a presentation of the history of mankind from the point of view of a materialistic approach
  • Issue 1. Problem and conceptual apparatus. The emergence of human society. //M. MIPT. 1997. 202 p.
  • Issue 2. History of primitive society. //M.: MIPT, 1999. - 190 p.
  • Issue 3. History of civilized society (XXX century BC - XX century AD). //M.: MIPT, 2001. - 206 p.
  • Yu. Muravyov Review of the book “Introduction to World History” // “First of September”. - 2002. - No. 71.

Further Reading

• Yu. I. Semenov. MATERIALIST UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY: PROS AND CONS
• Yu. I. Semenov Materialistic understanding of history: recent past, present, future
• Great People's Encyclopedia: justification of historical materialism in socialist times
• Marx K., Engels F., Lenin V.I.
• Stalin I.V. On dialectical and historical materialism