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

1. Center and periphery of the materialist understanding of history

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

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

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

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

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

Third position: There is not one, but several types of economic (production) relations, and thereby several qualitatively different systems of these relations. It follows that production can and does occur in different social forms. Thus, there are several types or forms of social production. These types of social production were called modes of production. Each mode of production is production taken in a specific social form.

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

The industrial revolution took place before the eyes of K. Marx and F. Engels. And where machine industry penetrated, feudal relations inevitably collapsed and capitalist relations were established. And the question formulated above naturally suggested an answer: the nature of economic (production) relations is determined by the level of development of the social forces that create the social product, that is, the productive forces of society. The change in systems of economic relations, and thus the main methods of production, is based on the development of productive forces. That's how it is fourth position historical materialism.

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

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

With the discovery of social matter, materialism was extended to phenomena of social life and became a philosophical doctrine, equally relevant to nature and society. It is this kind of comprehensive, completed to the top materialism that is called dialectical. Thus, the idea that dialectical materialism was first created and then extended to society is deeply mistaken. On the contrary, only when the materialist understanding of history was created did materialism become dialectical, but not before. The essence of Marx's new materialism is the materialist understanding of history.

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

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

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

The basis for the scheme of changes in socio-economic formations created by K. Marx and F. Engels was the periodization of world history that had been established by that time in historical science, in which three eras were initially distinguished (ancient, medieval, modern), and subsequently to them was added as a precursor to the ancient era of the Ancient East. The founders of Marxism associated a certain socio-economic formation with each of these world-historical eras. There is hardly any need to quote K. Marx’s famous statement about Asian, ancient, feudal and bourgeois modes of production. Continuing to develop their scheme, K. Marx and F. Engels later, based mainly on the work of L. G. Morgan “Ancient Society” (1877), came to the conclusion that antagonistic modes of production were preceded by primitive communal, or primitive communist . According to the concept they developed of the present and future of humanity, capitalist society should be replaced by a communist socio-economic formation. This is how a scheme for the development of mankind arose, in which five already existing and partly continuing to exist formations appear: primitive communist, Asian, ancient, feudal and bourgeois, and one more that does not yet exist, but which, according to the founders of Marxism, should inevitably arise - communist.

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

K. Marx and F. Engels spoke out on a wide variety of issues. K. Marx had a certain system of views on eastern (Asian), ancient and feudal societies, F. Engels - on primitive ones. But their concepts of primitiveness, antiquity, etc. are not included as constituent elements (even peripheral ones) either in the materialist understanding of history or in Marxism as a whole. And the obsolescence and even the outright fallacy of certain ideas of K. Marx and F. Engels about primitiveness, antiquity, religion, art, etc. cannot in the slightest degree indicate the inconsistency of the materialist understanding of history. Even revealing the incorrectness of certain ideas of Marx included in his theory of capitalist economics, which is one of the main parts of Marxism, does not directly affect the central core of the materialist concept of history.

In Russia before the revolution and abroad, both before and now, the materialist understanding of history has been criticized. In the USSR, such criticism began somewhere in 1989 and acquired a landslide character after August 1991. Actually, calling all this criticism can only be a stretch. It was real persecution. And they began to deal with historical materialism in the same ways in which it was previously defended. Historians in Soviet times were told: whoever is against the materialistic understanding of history is not a Soviet person. The arguments of the “democrats” were no less simple: in Soviet times there was a Gulag, which means that historical materialism is false from beginning to end. The materialist understanding of history, as a rule, was not refuted. They simply talked about its complete scientific failure as a matter of course. And those few who nevertheless tried to refute it acted according to a well-established scheme: attributing deliberate nonsense to historical materialism, they proved that it was nonsense, and celebrated victory. The attack on the materialist understanding of history that unfolded after August 1991 was met with sympathy by many historians. Some of them even actively joined the fight. One of the reasons for the hostility of a considerable number of specialists towards historical materialism was that it had previously been forced upon them. This inevitably gave rise to a feeling of protest. Another reason was that Marxism, having become the dominant ideology and a means of justifying the “socialist” orders existing in our country (which, in reality, have nothing in common with socialism), was degenerated: from a coherent system of scientific views it turned into a set of cliched phrases used in as spells and slogans. Real Marxism was replaced by the appearance of Marxism - pseudo-Marxism. This affected all parts of Marxism, not excluding the materialist understanding of history. What F. Engels feared most of all happened. “...The materialistic method,” he wrote, “turns into its opposite when it is used not as a guiding thread in historical research, but as a ready-made template according to which historical facts are cut and reshaped.”

At the same time, not only did the actual provisions of the materialist understanding of history turn into dead schemes, but also theses that did not follow from historical materialism were presented as immutable Marxist truths. It is enough to give such an example. It has been argued for a long time: Marxism teaches that the first class society can only be slave-owning and no other. It is a fact that the first class societies were ancient Eastern ones. This led to the conclusion that these societies were slaveholding societies. Anyone who thought otherwise was automatically declared anti-Marxist. In the societies of the Ancient East there were indeed slaves, although their exploitation was never the leading form. This allowed historians to at least somehow substantiate the position that these societies belonged to the slave-owning formation. Things were worse when societies that were supposed to be slave-owning societies had no slaves. Then direct producers who were not slaves were declared slaves, and the society was characterized as early slave-owning.

Historical materialism was considered as a method that allows, even before the study of a particular society begins, to establish what the researcher will find in it. It was difficult to come up with anything more stupid. In fact, a materialistic understanding of history does not precede the results of research; it only indicates how to look in order to understand the essence of a particular society.

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

Not a single one of the ideas included in the core of the materialist understanding of history has ever been refuted by anyone. In this sense, historical materialism is unshakable. As for its periphery, much of it is outdated and needs to be replaced and supplemented.

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

2. Socio-economic formation and sociohistorical organism

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

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

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

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

The first type is socio-historical organisms, which are unions of people that 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 historical materialism did not have the concept of a socio-historical organism, it developed neither the concept of a regional system of sociohistorical organisms, nor the concept of human society as a whole as the totality of all existing and existing sociors. The last concept, although present in an implicit form (implicit), was not clearly distinguished 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 socio-economic formation. It was impossible to truly understand the category of socio-economic formation without comparing it with the concept of a sociohistorical organism. Defining a formation as a society or as a stage of 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, without completely realizing it, moved from one meaning of this word to another, which inevitably gave rise to incredible confusion.

Each specific socio-economic formation represents a certain type of society, identified on the basis of socio-economic structure. This means that a specific socio-economic formation is nothing more than something common that is inherent in all socio-historical organisms that have a given socio-economic structure. The concept of a specific formation always captures, 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 relationship between a sociohistorical organism belonging to one or another socio-economic formation and this formation itself is a relationship between the individual and the general.

The problem of the general and the separate is one of the most important problems of philosophy, and debates around it have been conducted throughout the history of this area of ​​​​human knowledge. Since the Middle Ages, two main directions in solving this issue have been called nominalism and realism. According to the views of nominalists, in the objective world only the separate exists. There is either no general thing at all, or it exists only in consciousness, is a mental human construction.

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

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

Thus, there are two different types of objective existence in the world: one type is independent existence, as the separate exists, and the second is existence only in the separate and through the separate, as the general exists. Unfortunately, in our philosophical language there are no terms to designate these two different forms of objective existence. Sometimes, however, they say that the individual exists as such, but the general, although actually existing, does not exist as such. In the future, I will designate independent existence as self-existence, as self-existence, and existence in another and through another as other-existence, or as other-existence.

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

After this excursion into the theory of knowledge, let us return to the problem of formation. Since each specific socio-economic formation is general, it can and always exists in the real world only in individual societies, sociohistorical organisms, and as their deep general basis, their internal essence and thereby their type.

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

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

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

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

The only way that can lead to the creation of a theory of any formation is to identify that essential, common thing that is manifested in the development of all sociohistorical organisms of a given type. It is quite clear that it is impossible to reveal what is common in phenomena without being distracted from the differences between them. It is possible to identify 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, i.e., in the way in which it can exist only in theoretical consciousness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our history-matchers never understood this. In all monographs and in all textbooks on historical materialism, the structure of the formation was always considered and its main elements were listed: base, superstructure, including social consciousness, etc. These people believed that if we highlight what is common to the primitive, slaveholding, feudal etc. societies, then the formation in general will appear before us. But in fact, in this case, what appears before us is not the formation in general, but society in general. Imagining that they were describing the structure of a formation in general, the historians in reality were drawing the structure of society in general, that is, they were talking about what was common to all sociohistorical organisms without exception.

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

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

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

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 issue of formations. The situation was more complicated. As already indicated, in theory, socio-economic formations exist as ideal sociohistorical organisms. Not finding such formations in historical reality, some of our historians, and after them some historians, came to the conclusion that formations in reality do not exist at all, that they are only logical, theoretical constructions.

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

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

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

In the theory of socio-economic formations of K. Marx, each formation acts as a society in general of a certain type and thereby 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 in general into feudal society in general, pure feudal society into pure capitalist society, etc. In accordance with this, human society as a whole appears in theory as society in general - as one single pure socio-historical organism, the stages of development of which are societies in general of a certain type: pure primitive , pure Asian, pure ancient, pure feudal and pure capitalist.

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

And in itself there is nothing reprehensible in such a discrepancy between theory and reality. It always occurs in any science. After all, each of them takes the essence of phenomena in its pure form, and in this form the essence never exists in reality, because each of them considers necessity, regularity, law in its pure form, but pure laws do not exist in the world.

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

In our literature, the question is whether the Marxist scheme of change of socio-economic formations represents a mental reproduction of the evolution of each socio-historical organism, taken separately, or whether it expresses the internal objective logic of the development of only human society as a whole, but not the individual components of its sociors, was never presented in any clear form. This is largely due to the fact that in Marxist theory there was no concept of a socio-historical organism, and thereby the concept of a system of socio-historical organisms. Accordingly, it never made a sufficiently clear distinction between human society as a whole and society in general, did not analyze the difference between formation as it exists in theory and formation as it exists in reality, etc.

But if this question was not raised theoretically, in practice it was still resolved. In fact, it was believed that Marx’s scheme of development and change of socio-economic formations should have been realized in the evolution of each individual specific society, i.e., each socio-historical organism. As a result, world history was presented as a set of histories of many originally existing socio-historical organisms, each of which normally had to “go through” all socio-economic formations.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If in Western Europe XVI–XX centuries. While there was (and even then not always) a change in the types of socio-historical organisms while they themselves remained as special units of historical development, then, for example, the Ancient East was characterized by the exact opposite picture: the emergence and disappearance of socio-historical organisms without changing their type. The newly emerged socio-historical organisms were no different in type, i.e., formational affiliation, from the dead.

World history does not know of a single socio-historical organism that would have “passed through” not only all formations, but at least three of them. But we know many socio-historical organisms in the development of which there was no change of formations at all. They arose as socio-historical organisms of one specific type and disappeared without undergoing any changes in this regard. They arose, for example, as Asian and disappeared as Asian, appeared as ancient and died as ancient.

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

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

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

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

It was all the above facts that gave the opponents of Marxism the basis for declaring the materialist understanding of history to be a purely speculative scheme, in striking contradiction with historical reality. Indeed, they believed that if socio-economic formations in the overwhelming majority of cases do not act as stages of development of socio-historical organisms, then they certainly cannot be stages of world-historical development.

The question arises whether the above understanding of the change in socio-economic formations was inherent in the founders of historical materialism themselves, or whether it arose later and was a coarsening, simplification or even distortion of their own views. There is no doubt that the classics of Marxism have statements that allow precisely this, and not any other interpretation.

“The general result that I arrived at,” wrote K. Marx in his famous preface “To the Critique of Political Economy,” containing a statement of the foundations of historical materialism, “and which then served as the guiding thread in my further research, can be briefly formulated as follows. In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - production relations that correspond to a certain stage of development of their productive forces. The totality of these production relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond... At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with existing production relations, or - what is only the legal expression of the latter - with the property relations within which they have so far 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... 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 in the depths of the old society will mature.”

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

But along with statements similar to the one given above, K. Marx also has others. Thus, in a letter to the editor of Otechestvennye Zapiski, he objects to N.K. Mikhailovsky’s attempt to turn his “historical outline of the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe into a historical and philosophical theory about the universal path along which all peoples, no matter what their origin, are fatally doomed to go.” neither were the historical conditions in which they find themselves - in order to ultimately arrive at that economic formation that ensures, along with the greatest flowering of the productive forces of social labor, the most complete development of man.” But this idea was not specified by K. Marx, and it was practically not taken into account.

The scheme of changes in formations outlined by K. Marx in the preface to “A Critique of Political Economy” is to a certain extent consistent with what we know about the transition from primitive society to the first class society - Asian. But it doesn’t work at all when we try to understand how the second class formation arose - the ancient one. It was not at all the case that new productive forces had matured in the depths of Asian society, which became cramped within the framework of old production relations, and that as a consequence a social revolution took place, as a result of which Asian society turned into an ancient one. Nothing even remotely similar happened. No new productive forces arose in the depths of Asian society. Not a single Asian society, taken by itself, was transformed into an ancient one. Ancient societies appeared in territories where societies of the Asian type either never existed at all, or they had long since disappeared, and these new class societies arose from the pre-class societies that preceded them.

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

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

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

The situation was not much better with the application of Marx’s scheme of change of formations to the transition from ancient to feudal society. The last centuries of the existence of ancient society are characterized not by the rise of productive forces, but, on the contrary, by their continuous decline. This was fully recognized by F. Engels. “General impoverishment, the decline of trade, craft and art, population decline, desolation of cities, the return of agriculture to a lower level - this,” he wrote, “was the final result of Roman world domination.” As he repeatedly emphasized, ancient society had reached a “hopeless dead end.” Only the Germans opened the way out of this impasse, who, having crushed the Western Roman Empire, introduced a new mode of production - feudal. And they were able to do this because they were barbarians. But, having written all this, F. Engels did not in any way reconcile what was said with the theory of socio-economic formations.

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

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

The idea of ​​one pre-capitalist class formation was usually combined, either explicitly or implicitly, with the idea of ​​multi-linear development. But these ideas could exist separately. Since all attempts to discover in the development of the countries of the East in the period from the 8th century. n. e. until the middle of the 19th century. n. e. ancient, feudal and capitalist stages ended in failure, a number of scientists came to the conclusion that in the case of the replacement of slavery by feudalism, and the latter by capitalism, we are not dealing with a general pattern, but only with a Western European line of evolution and that the development of mankind is not unilinear, but multilinear Of course, at that time all researchers who held similar views sought (some sincerely, and some not so much) to prove that the recognition of multilinear development was completely consistent with Marxism.

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

The recognition of the multilinearity of historical development, which some Russian historians came to even during the time of the formally undivided dominance of Marxism, consistently carried out, inevitably leads to the denial of the unity of world history, to a pluralistic understanding of it.

But it is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that the seemingly purely unitarian understanding of history outlined above in fact also ultimately turns into multi-linearity and the actual denial of the unity of history. After all, in essence, world history, with this understanding, appears as a simple sum of parallel, completely independent processes of development of individual socio-historical organisms. The unity of world history is thus reduced only to the community of laws that determine the development of socio-historical organisms. Thus, we have before us many lines of development, but absolutely identical ones. This, in fact, is not so much unilinearity as multi-uniformity.

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

True, with the progressive development of human society as a whole, supporters of the orthodox interpretation of the change of formations also had serious problems. After all, it was quite obvious that the change in stages of progressive development in different societies did not occur synchronously. Let's say, by the beginning of the 19th century. some societies were still primitive, others were pre-class, others were “Asian,” others were feudal, and others were already capitalist. The question arises, at what stage of historical development was human society as a whole at that time? And in a more general formulation, it was a question about the signs by which one could judge what stage of progress human society as a whole had reached over a given period of time. And the supporters of the orthodox version did not give any answer to this question. They completely bypassed him. Some of them did not notice him at all, while others tried not to notice him.

To summarize, we can say that a significant drawback of the orthodox version of the theory of socio-economic formations is that it focuses attention only on “vertical” connections, connections in time, diachronic, and even then understood extremely one-sidedly, only as connections between different stages of development within the same socio-historical organisms. As for “horizontal” connections, that is, connections between socio-historical organisms coexisting in space, synchronous, intersocioral connections, they were not given any importance in the theory of socio-economic formations. This approach made it impossible to understand the progressive development of human society as a single whole, the changing stages of this development on the scale of all humanity, i.e., a true understanding of the unity of world history, and closed the road to true historical unitarianism.

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

The Marxist theory of socio-economic formations is one of the varieties of a broader approach to history. It lies in looking at world history as one single process of progressive, upward development of humanity. This understanding of history presupposes the existence of stages in the development of humanity as a whole. The unitary-stage approach arose a long time ago. It found its embodiment, for example, in the division of human history into such stages as savagery, barbarism and civilization (A. Ferguson and others), as well as in the division of this history into hunting-gathering, pastoral (pastoral), agricultural and trading. industrial periods (A. Turgot, A. Smith, etc.). The same approach was expressed in the identification of first three and then four world-historical eras in the development of civilized humanity: ancient oriental, ancient, medieval and modern (L. Bruni, F. Biondo, K. Köhler, etc.).

The flaw that I just spoke about was inherent not only in the orthodox version of the theory of socio-economic formations, but also in all the concepts mentioned above. This kind of version of the unitary-stage understanding of history should most accurately be called unitary-plural-stage. But this word is overly clumsy. Based on the fact that the words “linear” or “linear” are sometimes used to designate this view of history, I will call it linear-stadial. It is precisely this understanding of development that is practically most often meant when they talk about evolutionism in the historical and ethnological sciences.

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

Due to the fact that each such historical formation starts everything from the beginning, it cannot introduce anything fundamentally new into history. It follows that all such formations are completely equivalent, equivalent. None of them is either lower or higher than all the others in terms of development. Each of these formations develops, and for the time being even progressively, but humanity as a whole does not evolve, much less progress. There is an eternal rotation of many squirrel wheels.

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

The pluralist understanding of history did not arise today. At its origins stand J. A. Gobino and G. Rückert. The main provisions of historical pluralism were quite clearly formulated by N. Ya. Danilevsky, taken to the extreme limit by O. Spengler, significantly softened by A. J. Toynbee and, finally, acquired caricatured forms in the works of L. N. Gumilyov. The named thinkers named the historical formations they identified differently: civilizations (J. A. Gobineau, A. J. Toynbee), cultural and historical individuals (G. Rückert), cultural and historical types (N. Ya. Danilevsky), cultures or great cultures (O. Spengler), ethnic groups and super-ethnic groups (L. N. Gumilyov). But this did not change the very essence of this understanding of history.

The own constructions of even the classics of the pluralistic cyclic approach (not to mention their many admirers and epigones) were not of particular scientific value. But the criticism they subjected to the linear-stage understanding of the historical process was valuable.

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

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

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

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

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

By now, the plural-cyclical approach to history (in our country it is usually called “civilizational”) has exhausted all its possibilities and has become a thing of the past. Attempts to revive it, which are now being undertaken in our science, cannot lead to anything other than embarrassment. This is clearly evidenced by the articles and speeches of our “civilizationists.” Essentially, they all represent a pouring from empty to empty.

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

5. Relay-formation approach to world history

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

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

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

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

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

The way out of the situation can only be in one thing: in creating an approach in which stadiality and intersocio induction would be synthesized. No general reasoning about stadiality can help in creating such a new approach. The basis should be a fairly clear stage typology of sociohistorical organisms. To date, only one of the existing stage typologies of society deserves attention - the historical-materialist one.

This does not mean that it should be accepted in the form in which it now exists in the works of both the founders of Marxism and their many followers. An important feature that K. Marx and F. Engels based the typology is the socio-economic structure of a sociohistorical organism. It is necessary to identify socio-economic types of sociohistorical organisms.

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

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

I will not continue this series. The important conclusion is that throughout a significant part of world history, sociohistorical organisms of new and older types simultaneously existed. When applied to modern history, they often spoke about advanced countries and peoples and about backward, or backward, countries and peoples. In the 20th century the latter terms began to be seen as offensive and were replaced by others - “underdeveloped” and, finally, “developing” countries.

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

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

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

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

In application to more distant times, no developed concepts of superinduction were created. But this process was noticed by diffusionists and absolutized by hyperdiffusionists. Supporters of panegyptism painted a picture of the “Egyptianization” of the world, while advocates of pan-Babylonism painted a picture of its “Babylonization.” Historians who stuck to facts did not create such concepts. But they could not help but notice the processes of superinduction. And if they did not develop special concepts of superinduction, then they introduced terms to designate specific processes of this kind that took place in certain epochs. These are the terms “Orientalization” (in relation to archaic Greece and early Etruria), “Hellenization”, “Romanization”.

As a result of progression, the type of inferior organism may change. In some cases, it can turn into a sociohistorical organism of the same type as those influencing it, that is, rise to a higher stage of main development. This process of “pulling up” inferior organisms to the level of superior ones can be called superiorization. Modernization concepts have in mind precisely this option. Societies that are lagging behind in their development (traditional, agrarian, pre-modern) are turning into capitalist (industrial, modern).

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

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

As already indicated, there is not a single sociohistorical organism in the development of which more than two formations have occurred. And there are many sociors within which a change of formations did not take place at all.

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

All this brings the picture of the world historical process closer to historical reality. The fact that in the development of not a single sociohistorical organism there was a change in more than two formations does not in the least prevent the change of any number of them in the history of mankind as a whole. However, in this version, the change of socio-economic formations is conceived as occurring primarily within sociohistorical organisms. But in real history this is not always the case. Therefore, this concept does not provide a complete solution to the problem.

But besides those discussed above, there is another development option. And with it, the system of superior sociohistorical organisms influences the inferior sociors. But these latter, as a result of such influence, undergo more than a peculiar transformation. They do not transform into the same type of organisms as those affecting them. Superiorization does not occur.

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

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

It can be said that at the same time, a change in types of society also occurred within sociohistorical organisms. Indeed, within the inferior sociohistorical organisms there was a change from one socio-economic type of society to another, and then to another. But not one of the sociors that replaced them was the formation that previously dominated, which was previously supreme. The replacement of this previously dominant formation with a new one, to which the leading role has now passed, did not occur within one sociohistorical organism. It occurred only on the scale of human society as a whole.

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

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

But in addition to what was discussed above, history also knows one more type of ultrasuperiorization. It took place when geosocial organisms collided, on the one hand, and demosocial ones, on the other. There can be no question of the demosocior joining the geosocior. It is only possible to annex to the territory of the geosocior the territory in which the demosocior lives. In this case, the demosocior, if it continues to remain in this territory, is included, introduced into the geosocior, continuing to survive as a special society. This is demosocior introduction (lat. introduction– introduction). It is possible for both penetration and settlement of demosocior people on the territory of geosocior - demosocior infiltration (from lat. in– at and wed. lat. filtratio- straining). In both cases, only subsequently, and not always and not soon, does the destruction of the demosocior and the direct entry of its members into the geosocior occur. This is geosocior assimilation, also known as demosocior annihilation.

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

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

In the third option, there is a synthesis of geosocior and demosocior socio-economic and other social structures. As a result of this synthesis, a new type of society emerges. This type of society is different from both the type of the original geosocior and the type of the original demosocior. Such a society may be capable of independent internal development, as a result of which it rises to a higher stage of mainstream development than the original superior geosocial organism. As a consequence of such ultrasuperiorization, there will be a change in socio-economic formations on the scale of human society as a whole. And again this happens when the original superior organism is not able to transform into a society of a higher type. This process took place during the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Historians talk about the Romano-Germanic synthesis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is only one way to prove the correctness of this approach to world history: to draw, guided by it, such a holistic picture of world history that would be in greater accordance with the facts accumulated by historical science than all currently existing ones. I have made such an attempt in a number of works, to which I refer the reader 24

Dialectics of social development Konstantinov Fedor Vasilievich

1. Socio-economic formation

(The category “socio-economic formation” is the cornerstone of the materialistic rise of history as a natural historical process of the development of society according to objective laws. Without understanding the deep content of this category, it is impossible to know the essence of human society and its development along the path of progress.

Developing historical materialism as a philosophical science and a general sociological theory, the founders of Marxism-Leninism showed that the starting point for the study of society must be taken not the individual individuals that make it up, but those social relations that develop between people in the process of their production activities, i.e. total industrial relations.

For the sake of producing the material goods necessary for life, people inevitably enter into production relations independent of their will, which in turn determine all other - socio-political, ideological, moral, etc. - relations, as well as the development of the person himself as an individual. V.I. Lenin noted that “a sociologist-materialist who makes the subject of his study certain social relations of people, thereby also studies real personalities, from the actions of which these relations are composed.”

Scientific materialist knowledge of society was developed in the struggle against bourgeois sociology. Bourgeois philosophers and subjectivist sociologists operated with the concepts of “man in general,” “society in general.” They proceeded not from a generalization of the real activities of people and their interactions, interrelations, not from social relations emerging on the basis of their practical activities, but from an abstract “model of society”, completed in accordance with the subjective view of the scientist and supposedly corresponding to human nature. Naturally, such an idealistic concept of society, divorced from the immediate life of people and their actual relationships, is opposite to its materialist interpretation.

Historical materialism, when analyzing the category of socio-economic formation, operates with the scientific concept of society. It is used when analyzing the relationship between society and nature, when the need to maintain an ecological balance between them is considered. It is impossible to do without it when considering both human society as a whole and any specific historical type and stage of its development. Finally, this concept is organically woven into the definition of the subject of historical materialism as a science about the most general laws of the development of society and its driving forces. V.I. Lenin wrote that K. Marx discarded empty talk about society in general and began studying one specific, capitalist formation. However, this does not mean at all that K. Marx will reject the very concept of society. As V.I. Razin notes, he “only spoke out against empty discussions about society in general, which bourgeois sociologists did not go beyond.”

The concept of society cannot be discarded or opposed to the concept of “socio-economic formation”. This would contradict the most important principle of the approach to the definition of scientific concepts. This principle, as is known, is that the concept being defined must be subsumed under another, broader in scope, which is generic in relation to the one being defined. This is a logical rule for defining any concepts. It is quite applicable to the definition of the concepts of society and socio-economic formation. In this case, the generic concept is “society,” considered regardless of its specific form and historical stage of development. This was repeatedly noted by K. Marx. “What is society, whatever its form? - K. Marx asked and answered: “A product of human interaction.” Society “expresses the sum of those connections and relationships in which... individuals are related to each other.” Society is “man himself in his social relations.”

Being generic in relation to the concept of “socio-economic formation,” the concept of “society” reflects the qualitative certainty of the social form of the movement of matter, in contrast to other forms. The category “socio-economic formation” expresses the qualitative certainty of the types and historical stages of the development of society.

Since society is a system of social relations that make up a certain structural integrity, knowledge of it consists in the study of these relations. Criticizing the subjective method of N. Mikhailovsky and other Russian populists, V. I. Lenin wrote: “Where will you get the concept of society and progress in general, when you ... have not even been able to approach a serious factual study, an objective analysis of any social relationship?

As is known, K. Marx began his analysis of the concept and structure of a socio-economic formation with the study of social relations, primarily production relations. Having isolated from the entire totality of social relations the main, defining, i.e., material, production relations on which the development of other social relations depends, K. Marx found an objective criterion of repeatability in the development of society, which was denied by subjectivists. Analysis of “material social relations,” noted V.I. Lenin, “immediately made it possible to notice repeatability and correctness and to generalize the orders of different countries into one basic concept social formation." Isolating what is common and repeats itself in the history of different countries and peoples has made it possible to identify qualitatively defined types of society and to present social development as a natural historical process of the natural progressive movement of society from lower to higher levels.

The category of socio-economic formation simultaneously reflects the concept of the type of society and the stage of its historical development. In the preface to the work “A Critique of Political Economy,” K. Marx singled out Asian, ancient, feudal and bourgeois modes of production as progressive eras of economic social formation. The bourgeois social formation “ends the prehistory of human society”; it is naturally replaced by the communist social economic formation, which reveals the true history of mankind. In subsequent works, the founders of Marxism also singled out the primitive communal formation as the first in the history of mankind, which all peoples go through.

This typification of socio-economic formations, created by K. Marx in the 50s of the 19th century, also provided for the presence in history of a specific Asian mode of production and, therefore, an Asian formation that existed on its basis, which took place in the countries of the Ancient East. However, already in the early 80s of the 19th century, when K. Marx and F. Engels developed a definition of the primitive communal and slave-owning formation, they did not use the term “Asian mode of production”, abandoning this very concept. In the subsequent works of K. Marx and F. Engels, we talk only about... five socio-economic ones. formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist.

The construction of a typology of socio-economic formations was based on the brilliant knowledge of K. Marx and F. Engels of historical, economic and other social sciences, because it is impossible to resolve the issue of the number of formations and the order of their occurrence without taking into account the achievements of history, economics, politics, law, archeology, etc. . P.

The formational stage that a particular country or region goes through is determined primarily by the prevailing production relations in them, which determine the nature of social, political and spiritual relations at a given stage of development and the corresponding social institutions. Therefore, V.I. Lenin defined a socio-economic formation as a set of production relations. But of course, he did not reduce the formation only to the totality of production relations, but pointed out the need for a comprehensive analysis of its structure and the interrelations of all aspects of the latter. Noting that the study of the capitalist formation in K. Marx’s “Capital” is based on the study of the production relations of capitalism, V. I. Lenin at the same time emphasized that this is only the skeleton of “Capital”. He wrote:

“The whole point, however, is that Marx was not satisfied with this skeleton... that - explaining structure and development of this social formation exclusively relations of production - he nevertheless everywhere and constantly traced the superstructures corresponding to these relations of production, clothed the skeleton with flesh and blood.” “Capital” showed “the reader the entire capitalist social formation as alive - with its everyday aspects, with the actual social manifestation of the class antagonism inherent in production relations, with the bourgeois political superstructure protecting the dominance of the capitalist class, with the bourgeois ideas of freedom, equality, etc., with bourgeois family relations."

A socio-economic formation is a qualitatively defined type of society at a given stage of its historical development, which represents a system of social relations and phenomena determined by the method of production and subject to both general and its own specific laws of functioning and development. The category of socio-economic formation, as the most general one in historical materialism, reflects all the diversity of aspects of social life at a certain stage of its historical development. The structure of each formation includes both general elements characteristic of all formations and unique elements characteristic of a specific formation. At the same time, the determining role in the development and interaction of all structural elements is played by the method of production, its inherent production relations, which determine the nature and type of all elements of the formation.

In addition to the method of production, the most important structural elements of all socio-economic formations are the corresponding economic base and the superstructure rising above it. In historical materialism, the concepts of base and superstructure serve to distinguish between material (primary) and ideological (secondary) social relations. The basis is a set of production relations, the economic structure of society. This concept expresses the social function of production relations as the economic basis of society, developing between people regardless of their consciousness in the process of producing material goods.

The superstructure is formed on the basis of the economic basis, develops and changes under the influence of the transformations taking place in it, and is its reflection. The superstructure includes ideas, theories and views of society and the institutions, institutions and organizations that implement them, as well as ideological relations between people, social groups, classes. The peculiarity of ideological relations, in contrast to material ones, is that they pass through the consciousness of people, that is, they are built consciously, in accordance with the ideas, views, needs and interests that guide people.

The most general elements that characterize the structure of all formations should include, in our opinion, the way of life. As K. Marx and F. Engels showed, a way of life is “a certain way of activity of given individuals, a certain type of their life activity,” which develops under the influence of the method of production. Representing a set of types of life activities of people, social groups in labor, socio-political, family and household, etc. spheres, the way of life is formed on the basis of a given method of production, under the influence of production relations and in accordance with the value orientations and ideals prevailing in society . Reflecting human activity, the category of lifestyle reveals the individual and social groups primarily as subjects of social relations.

Prevailing social relations are inseparable from the way of life. For example, the collectivist way of life in a socialist society is fundamentally opposite to the individualistic way of life under capitalism, which is determined by the opposition of the social relations prevailing in these societies. However, it does not follow from this that lifestyle and social relations can be identified, as was sometimes allowed in the works of some sociologists. Such identification led to the loss of the specificity of the way of life as one of the elements of the social formation, to its identification with the formation, and replaced this most general concept of historical materialism, reducing its methodological significance for understanding the development of society. The 26th Congress of the CPSU, determining ways for the further development of the socialist way of life, noted the need to practically strengthen its material and spiritual foundations. This should be expressed primarily in the transformation and development of such spheres of life as labor, cultural and living conditions, medical care, trade, public education, physical culture, sports, etc., which contribute to the comprehensive development of the individual.

The method of production, the basis and superstructure, the way of life constitute the basic elements of the structure of all formations, but their content is specific to each of them. In any formation, these structural elements have a qualitative certainty, determined primarily by the type of production relations prevailing in society, the peculiarities of the emergence and development of these elements during the transition to a more progressive formation. Thus, in exploitative societies, the structural elements and the relationships they define have a contradictory, antagonistic character. These elements already originate in the depths of the previous formation, and the social revolution, which marks the transition to a more progressive formation, eliminating outdated production relations and the superstructure that expressed them (primarily the old state machine), gives scope for the development of new relations and phenomena characteristic of the established formation. Thus, the social revolution brings into line outdated production relations with the productive forces that have grown in the depths of the old system, which ensures the further development of production and social relations.

The socialist basis, superstructure and way of life cannot arise in the depths of the capitalist formation, since they are based only on socialist production relations, which in turn are formed only on the basis of socialist ownership of the means of production. As is known, socialist property is established only after the victory of the socialist revolution and the nationalization of bourgeois ownership of the means of production, as well as as a result of production cooperation between the economy of artisans and working peasants.

In addition to the noted elements, the structure of the formation also includes other social phenomena that influence its development. Among these phenomena, such as family and everyday life are inherent in all formations, and such historical communities of people as clan, tribe, nationality, nation, class are characteristic only of certain formations.

As stated, each formation is a complex set of qualitatively defined social relations, phenomena and processes. They are formed in various spheres of human activity and together constitute the structure of the formation. What many of these phenomena have in common is that they cannot be completely attributed only to the base or only to the superstructure. Such are, for example, family, everyday life, class, nation, the system of which includes basic - material, economic - relations, as well as ideological relations of a superstructural nature. To determine their role in the system of social relations of a given formation, it is necessary to take into account the nature of the social needs that gave rise to these phenomena, to identify the nature of their connections with production relations, and to reveal their social functions. Only such a comprehensive analysis allows one to correctly determine the structure of the formation and the patterns of its development.

To reveal the concept of socio-economic formation as a stage in the natural historical development of society, the concept of “world-historical era” is important. This concept reflects a whole period in the development of society, when, on the basis of a social revolution, a transition is made from one formation to another, more progressive one. During the period of revolution, a qualitative transformation of the method of production, base and superstructure, as well as the way of life and other components of the structure of the formation occurs, the formation of a qualitatively new social organism is carried out, accompanied by the resolution of urgent contradictions in the development of the economic base and superstructure. “...The development of the contradictions of a known historical form of production is the only historical way of its decomposition and the formation of a new one,” noted K. Marx in Capital.

The unity and diversity of the historical development of mankind finds its expression in the dialectics of the formation and change of socio-economic formations. The general pattern of human history is that, in general, all peoples and countries go from lower to higher formations in the organization of social life, forming the main line of progressive development of society along the path of progress. However, this general pattern manifests itself specifically in the development of individual countries and peoples. This is explained by the uneven pace of development, arising not only from the uniqueness of economic development, but also “thanks to the infinitely varied empirical circumstances, natural conditions, racial relations, historical influences acting from outside, etc.”

The diversity of historical development is inherent both in individual countries and peoples, and in formations. It manifests itself in the existence of varieties of individual formations (for example, serfdom is a type of feudalism); in the uniqueness of the transition from one formation to another (for example, the transition from capitalism to socialism presupposes a whole transition period, during which a socialist society is created);

in the ability of individual countries and peoples to bypass certain formations (for example, in Russia there was no slave-owning formation, and Mongolia and some developing countries bypassed the era of capitalism).

The experience of history shows that in transitional historical eras, a new socio-economic formation is first established in individual countries or groups of countries. Thus, after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the world split into two systems, and the formation of the communist formation in Russia began. Following our country, a number of countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa embarked on the path of transition from capitalism to socialism. V. I. Lenin’s prediction that “the destruction of capitalism and its traces, the introduction of the foundations of the communist order constitutes the content of the new era of world history that has now begun” was fully confirmed. The main content of the modern era is the transition from capitalism to socialism and communism on a worldwide scale. The countries of the socialist community are today the leading force and determine the main direction of the social progress of all mankind. At the forefront of the socialist countries is the Soviet Union, which, having built a developed socialist society, entered a “necessary, natural and historically long period in the formation of the communist formation.” The stage of a developed socialist society is the pinnacle of social progress in our time.

Communism is a classless society of complete social equality and social homogeneity, ensuring a harmonious combination of public and personal interests and the comprehensive development of the individual as the highest goal of this society. Its implementation will be in the interests of all humanity. The communist formation is the last form of structure of the human race, but not because the development of history stops there. At its core, its development excludes socio-political revolution. Under communism, contradictions between the productive forces and production relations will remain, but they will be resolved by society without leading to the need for a social revolution, the overthrow of the old system and its replacement with a new one. By promptly revealing and resolving emerging contradictions, communism as a formation will develop endlessly.