Sociological concept of K. Marx

Years of life of K. Marx – 1818-1883.

K. Marx’s significant works include “Capital”, “The Poverty of Philosophy”, “The Civil War in France”, “On the Critique of Political Economy”, etc. K. Marx wrote such works together with F. Engels. Like “German Ideology”, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, etc.

The ideas of K. Marx and F. Engels are fundamental in nature. They had a great influence on the development of philosophical, sociological, socio-political thought throughout the world. Many Western concepts of social dynamics arose in opposition to the ideas of Marx.

Sociology of Marx is a theory of social development of society. Interpreting the historical process, Marx for the first time applies principle of materialistic understanding of history(a philosophical principle that substantiates the primacy of social existence and the secondary nature of social consciousness). In other words, the defining moment in the historical process is the production and reproduction of real life, that is, economic conditions, material relations that determine the totality of ideological, political, legal and other relations associated with social consciousness.

Marx's position is defined as economic determinism(philosophical position according to which economic, material relations determine all other relations).

However, not all so simple. Recognizing the primacy of economic relations, Marx did not deny the influence of political, ideological and other factors. In particular, he noted that in certain situations (crisis, war, etc.) the determining influence of political factors is possible.

Marx's fundamental concept is the theory socio-economic formation, which covers all aspects of social life in integrity and interaction. In this concept, Marx for the first time, from the standpoint of a systems approach, considers society as an objective, self-developing reality. At the same time, the source of self-development is contradictions and conflicts in material life.

Theory of socio-economic formation

The basic concepts of the theory of socio-economic formation include the following:

1. socio-economic formation – a historically defined stage in the development of society, which is characterized by its characteristic mode of production and (conditioned by it) a set of social, political, legal, ideological relations, norms and institutions;

2. production - the process by which people transform natural objects to satisfy their needs; by their own activities they mediate, regulate and control the metabolism between themselves and nature. There are various types of production (production of material goods, labor, production relations, social structure, etc.) Among them, the main ones are two main types of production: the production of means of production and the production of man himself;

3. reproduction– the process of self-healing and self-renewal of social systems. There are also various types of reproduction, among which the main ones are the reproduction of the means of production and the reproduction of human life;

4. mode of production– historically specific unity of productive forces and production relations that determine the social, political, spiritual processes of social life;

5. basis- a set of production relations that make up the economic structure of society at a given stage of development;

6. superstructure– a set of political, legal, spiritual, philosophical, religious and other views and institutions corresponding to them;

7. productive forces– a system of subjective (labor) and material (means of production, tools, technology) factors necessary to transform natural substances into products needed by humans;

8. industrial relations- relationships that develop between people in the production process.

Figure 1 shows the structure of the socio-economic formation

Rice. 1. Structure of the socio-economic formation

Marx identifies 5 formations, three of them are class. Each class formation corresponds to two main classes, which are antagonistic(antagonism – irreconcilable contradiction, conflict):

1. primitive communal system - there are no classes yet;

2. slave society - slaves and slave owners;

3. feudal society - peasants and feudal lords;

4. capitalism (bourgeois society) - bourgeoisie and proletariat (working class);

5. communism - there will be no classes.

According to Marx, the historical process is characterized by:

· systematic;

Revolutionary spirit

· irreversibility;

· unilinearity – from simple to complex;

· progressiveness.

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

It was believed that any social phenomenon can be correctly understood only in connection with a certain O.E.F., an element or product of which it is. The term “formation” itself was borrowed by Marx from geology.

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

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

The term O.E.F. introduced by Plekhanov and Lenin. Lenin, generally following the logic of Marx’s concept, significantly simplified and narrowed it, identifying O.E.F. with the mode of production and reducing it to a system of production relations. Canonization of the O.E.F. concept in the form of the so-called “five-member structure” was implemented by Stalin in the “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”. Representatives of historical materialism believed that the concept of O.E.F. allows us to notice repetition in history and thereby give it a strictly scientific analysis. The change of formations forms the main line of progress; formations perish due to internal antagonisms, but with the advent of communism, the law of change of formations ceases to operate.

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

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

It is important to remember the high degree of abstraction of such theoretical constructs, their schematic nature, the inadmissibility of their ontologization, direct identification with reality, and also their use for constructing social forecasts and developing specific political tactics. If this is not taken into account, then the result, as experience shows, is social deformation and disaster.

Types of socio-economic formations:

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

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

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

The existence of the Asian mode of production as a separate formation is not generally accepted and has been a topic of discussion throughout the existence of historical mathematics; it is also not mentioned everywhere in the works of Marx and Engels.

3.Slavery . There is private ownership of the means of production. Direct labor is occupied by a separate class of slaves - people deprived of freedom, owned by slave owners and regarded as “talking tools.” Slaves work but do not own the means of production. Slave owners organize production and appropriate the results of slaves' labor.

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

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

The main mechanism that motivates people to work is economic coercion - the worker does not have the opportunity to ensure his life in any other way than by receiving wages for the work he performs.

6. Communism . A theoretical (never existed in practice) structure of society that should replace capitalism. Under communism, all means of production are publicly owned, and private ownership of means of production is completely eliminated. Labor is universal, there is no class division. It is assumed that a person works consciously, striving to bring the greatest benefit to society and without the need for external incentives such as economic coercion.

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

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

Development of Karl Marx's views on historical formations

Marx himself, in his later works, considered three new “modes of production”: “Asiatic”, “ancient” and “Germanic”. However, this development of Marx’s views was later ignored in the USSR, where only one orthodox version of historical materialism was officially recognized, according to which “history knows five socio-economic formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This definition captures the following structural and dynamic elements:

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

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

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

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

By productive forces Marxism understood:

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

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

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

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

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

According to the formation theory of K. Marx, in each historical period, if you take a snapshot of humanity, a variety of formations coexist on the planet - some in their classical form, others in their survival form (transitional societies, where the remains of a variety of formations are layered).

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

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

Slavery was replaced by feudalism- a method of production based on the exploitation of personally and land-dependent direct producers by land owners. It arose at the end of the 5th century. as a result of the decomposition of the slaveholding, and in some countries (including the Eastern Slavs) the primitive communal system

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

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

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

The functioning and change of formations is subject to general laws that link them into a single process of forward movement of humanity. At the same time, each formation has its own special laws of origin and development. The unity of the historical process does not mean that every social organism goes through all formations. Humanity as a whole goes through them, “pulling up” to those countries and regions where the most progressive method of production in a given historical era has won and the superstructural forms corresponding to it have developed.

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

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

For the first time, the concept of socio-economic formation was defined by K. Marx. It is based on a materialistic understanding of history. The development of human society is considered as an unchanging and natural process of changing formations. There are five of them in total. The basis of each of them is a certain one that arises in the production process and during the distribution of material goods, their exchange and consumption, forming an economic basis, which in turn determines the legal and political superstructure, the structure of society, everyday life, family, and so on.

The emergence and development of formations is carried out according to special economic laws that operate until the transition to the next stage of development. One of them is the law of correspondence of production relations to the level and nature of development of productive forces. Any formation goes through certain stages in its development. At the latter stage, a conflict occurs and the need arises to change the old method of production to a new one and, as a result, one formation, more progressive, replaces another.

So what is a socio-economic formation?

This is a historically established type of society, the development of which is based on a certain method of production. Any formation is a certain specific stage of human society.

What socio-economic formations are highlighted by supporters of this theory of the development of state and society?

Historically, the first formation is the primitive communal one. The type of production was determined by the established relations in the tribal community and the distribution of labor among its members.

As a result of development between peoples, a slave-owning socio-economic formation arises. The scope of communication is expanding. Such concepts as civilization and barbarism appear. This period was characterized by many wars, during which military booty and tribute were confiscated as a surplus product, and free labor appeared in the form of slaves.

The third stage of development is the emergence of a feudal formation. At this time, there were mass migrations of peasants to new lands, constant wars for subjects and land between feudal lords. The integrity of economic units had to be ensured by military force, and the role of the feudal lord was to maintain their integrity. War became one of the conditions of production.

Proponents identify the capitalist formation as the fourth stage of development of the state and society. This is the last stage, which is based on the exploitation of people. The means of production are developing, factories and factories are appearing. The role of the international market is increasing.

The last socio-economic formation is communist, which in its development passes through socialism and communism. At the same time, two types of socialism are distinguished - basically built and developed.

The theory of socio-economic formations arose in connection with the need to scientifically substantiate the steady movement of all countries of the world towards communism, the inevitability of the transition to this formation from capitalism.

Formational theory has a number of shortcomings. Thus, it takes into account only the economic factor of the development of states, which is of great importance, but is not fully decisive. In addition, opponents of the theory point out that in none of the countries does a socio-economic formation exist in its pure form.

Introduction

Today, the concepts of the historical process (formational, civilizational, modernization theories) have discovered their limits of applicability. The degree of awareness of the limitations of these concepts varies: most of all, the shortcomings of formation theory are realized; as for the civilizational doctrine and theories of modernization, there are more illusions regarding their ability to explain the historical process.

The insufficiency of these concepts for the study of social changes does not mean that they are absolutely false; the point is only that the categorical apparatus of each of the concepts and the range of social phenomena it describes are not complete enough, at least in relation to the description of what is contained in alternative theories.

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

Theories of the historical process reflect a one-sided understanding of historical changes; there is a reduction of the diversity of their forms to some kind. The formational concept sees only progress in the historical process, and total progress, believing that progressive development covers all spheres of social life, including humans.

Theory of socio-economic formations by K. Marx

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. In this understanding, I will call society a socio-historical (sociohistorical) organism or, in short, a socior.

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

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, the 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 waged 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.

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 thus 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.

Sometimes, however, they say that the individual exists as such, but the general, while 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.

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., the way it can exist only in theoretical consciousness.

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.

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 in general 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 features, namely, that they are all types identified on the basis of socio-economic structure.

As a reaction to this kind of interpretation of socio-economic formations, a denial of their real existence arose. But it was not only due to the incredible confusion that existed in our literature on the 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 the historical reality, some of our historians, and after them some historians of history, 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.

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

Socio-historical practice has confirmed the correctness of these Marxist conclusions. And if there are disputes in science regarding the Asian and ancient (slave-owning) methods of production and their transition to feudalism, then no one doubts the reality of the existence of the historical period of feudalism, and then its evolutionary-revolutionary development into capitalism.

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

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