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

In the philosophy and methodology of scientific knowledge, the view that each scientific theory consists, firstly, of the central core, and secondly, of the periphery surrounding it. Revealing the inconsistency of at least one idea that is part of 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 by other ideas does not in itself cast doubt on the truth of the theory as a whole.

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

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

The second proposition is that production always has a social character and always takes place in a definite social form. The social form in which the production process takes place is the system of socio-economic or, as the Marxists also call them, production relations.

Third position: there is not one, but several types of economic (production) relations, and thus several qualitatively different systems of these relations. It follows from this that production can and does take place in various 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 definite social form.

The existence of slave-owning, feudal and capitalist modes of production is now essentially recognized 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-owning, 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 appear 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 flowering 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 indisputable. And the identification of this fact inevitably gives rise to the question: why in one era one system of economic relations dominated, in another - another, in the third - the third.

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

As a result, not only was a solid foundation laid for the economists' long-established conviction of 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 but an objective source of social ideas, which the old materialists searched in vain and could not find, is social being (in the narrow sense) or social matter.
The fifth provision of historical materialism is the thesis about the materiality of economic (production) relations. The system of economic relations is material in the sense and only in the sense that it is primary in relation to the public consciousness.

With the discovery of social matter, materialism was extended to the phenomena of social life, became a philosophical doctrine equally related to both nature and society. It is precisely such a comprehensive, completed to the top materialism that received the name of dialectical. Thus, the notion that dialectical materialism was first created and then extended to society is profoundly mistaken. On the contrary, only when the materialistic understanding of history was created did materialism become dialectical, but not before. The essence of the new Marxian materialism lies in the materialist understanding of history.

According to the materialistic understanding of history, the system of economic (production) relations is the basis, the basis of any particular individual society. And it was natural to base the classification of individual concrete societies, their subdivisions into types, on the nature of their economic structure. Societies based on the same system of economic relations, based on one mode of production, belong to the same type, societies based on different modes of production, belong to different types of society. These types of society, identified on the basis of the socio-economic structure, are called socio-economic formations. There are as many of them as there are basic methods of production.

Just as the main modes of production are not only types, but also stages of development of social production, socio-economic formations are such types of society that are at the same time stages of the world- historical development. This is the sixth position of the materialistic understanding of history.

The concept of the main modes of production as types of production and stages of its development and the concept of socio-economic formations as the main types of society and stages of world-historical developments form the core of historical materialism. Judgments about how many modes of production exist, how many of them are the main ones, 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 scheme of change of socio-economic formations, created by K. Marx and F. Engels, was based on the periodization established by that time in historical science world history, in which three epochs were initially distinguished (antique, medieval, new), and later on they were added as the previous ancient epoch of the Ancient East. With each of these world-historical epochs, the founders of Marxism associated a certain socio-economic formation. It is hardly necessary to quote the well-known statement of K. Marx about the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and bourgeois modes of production. Continuing to develop their scheme, K. Marx and F. Engels in the future, based mainly on the work of L.G. Morgan" ancient society"(1877), came to the conclusion that the primitive communal, or primitive communist, preceded the antagonistic modes of production. According to the concept of the present and future of mankind developed by them, the communist socio-economic formation should replace the capitalist society. This is how the scheme for the development of mankind arose, in in which five formations that already existed and partly continue to exist appear: primitive communist, Asian, ancient, feudal and bourgeois, and one more, which does not yet exist, but which, according to the founders of Marxism, must inevitably arise - communist.

When one or another truly scientific theory is created, it becomes relatively independent also in relation to its own creators. Therefore, not all the ideas of even its creators, not to mention their followers, and even those directly related to the problems posed and solved by this theory, can be considered as components of this theory. So, for example, F. Engels at one time 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 the person himself (child production). And although this proposition was put forward by one of the creators of the materialistic understanding of history, it cannot be considered as part of not only the central core, but also the peripheral part of this theory. It is incompatible with the basic tenets of historical materialism. This was once pointed out by G. Kunov. But more importantly, it is false.

K. Marx and F. Engels spoke out on a variety of issues. K. Marx had a certain system of views on Eastern (Asian), ancient and feudal society, F. Engels - on primitive society. But their concepts of primitiveness, antiquity, etc. are not included as components (even peripheral ones) either in the materialist understanding of history, or in Marxism as a whole. And the outdatedness and even the direct fallacy of certain ideas of K. Marx and F. Engels about primitiveness, antiquity, religion, art, etc. cannot in the slightest degree testify to the failure of the materialistic understanding of history. Even revealing the inaccuracy 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 conception of history.

In Russia before the revolution and abroad, both before and now, the materialistic understanding of history was criticized. In the USSR, such criticism began sometime in 1989 and acquired a landslide character after August 1991. Actually, all this can be called criticism only with a big stretch. It was a real persecution. And they began to crack down on historical materialism in the same ways that it was previously defended. Historians in Soviet times they said: whoever is against the materialistic understanding of history, he will not soviet man. The argument of the "democrats" was no less simple: in Soviet times there was a Gulag, which means that historical materialism is false from beginning to end. The materialistic understanding of history, as a rule, was not refuted. Just as a matter of course, they spoke of his complete scientific failure. And those few who nevertheless tried to refute it acted according to a well-established scheme: attributing deliberate nonsense to historical materialism, they argued that it was nonsense, and triumphed.

The offensive against the materialistic understanding of history that unfolded after August 1991 was greeted 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 to historical materialism was that it had previously been imposed on them by force. This inevitably gave rise to a feeling of protest. Another reason was that Marxism, having become the dominant ideology and a means of justifying the "socialist" (in reality, having nothing to do with socialism) orders existing in our country, was reborn: from a coherent system of scientific views it turned into a set of stamped phrases used in as spells and slogans. Real Marxism has been replaced by the appearance of Marxism - pseudo-Marxism. This affected all parts of Marxism, not excluding the materialistic 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 ready template according to which historical facts are cut and reshaped.

At the same time, not only did the real provisions of the materialist understanding of history turn into dead schemes, but such theses were presented as immutable Marxist truths, which in no way followed from historical materialism. It suffices to give an example. For a long time it has been affirmed in our country: Marxism teaches that the first class society can only be a slave-owning society and no other. It is a fact that the first class societies were those of the ancient East. This led to the conclusion that these societies were slave-owning. 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 somehow substantiate the position that these societies belonged to the slave-owning formation. The situation was worse when there were no slaves in societies that were supposed to be slave-owning. Then the slaves were declared such direct producers who were not in any way, and the society was characterized as early slave-owning.

Historical materialism was considered as such a method that allows, even before the start of the study of a particular society, to establish what will be found in it by the researcher. It was hard to come up with more nonsense. In fact, the materialistic understanding of history does not anticipate the results of research, it only indicates how to search in order to understand the essence of this or that particular society.

However, it would be wrong to believe that in order to reverse the transformation of historical materialism from the template under which the facts were adjusted, as it was with us for a long time, into a genuine method of historical research, it is enough to return to the origins, to restore the rights of everything that was once created K. Marx and F. Engels. The materialistic 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.

None of the ideas that make up 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 must be replaced and supplemented.

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

2. Socio-economic formation and socio-historical organism

One of the important shortcomings of orthodox historical materialism was that it did not identify and theoretically develop the basic meanings of the word "society". And this word in the 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. Society in this understanding, I will call a socio-historical (socio-historical) organism or, in short, a socior.

The second meaning is a spatially limited system of socio-historical organisms, or a sociological system. The third meaning is all the socio-historical organisms that have ever existed and still exist, 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 of a certain type in general (a particular 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 initial, elementary, primary subjects of the historical process, from which all other, more complex subjects of it are composed - sociological systems of different levels. Each of the sociological systems of any hierarchical level was also the 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 the form of government, the dominant confession, the socio-economic system, the dominant sphere of the economy, etc.). But the most general classification- the subdivision 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 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. Such societies I will call demosocial organisms (demosociors). They are characteristic of the pre-class era of human history. Examples are 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 such societies geosocial organisms (geosociors). They are characteristic of a class society. They are usually referred to as states or countries.

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

The absence of the concept of a socio-historical 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 socio-historical organism. Defining the formation as a society or as a stage in the development of society, our specialists in historical materialism did not reveal in any way the meaning that they put into the word "society"; to another, which inevitably gave rise to incredible confusion.

Each specific socio-economic formation is a specific type of society, identified on the basis of the socio-economic structure. This means that a specific socio-economic formation is nothing other than that which is common to all socio-historical organisms that have a given socio-economic structure. The concept of a specific formation always fixes, on the one hand, the fundamental identity of all sociohistorical organisms based on the same system of production relations, and on the other hand, a significant difference between specific societies with different socio-economic structures. Thus, the ratio of a socio-historical organism belonging to one or another socio-economic formation and this formation itself is the ratio of the individual and the general.

The problem of the general and the individual is one of the most important problems of philosophy and disputes around it have been going on throughout the history of this area. human knowledge. Since the Middle Ages, two main directions in solving this issue have been called nominalism and realism. According to the views of the nominalists, in the objective world there is only the separate. The general either does not exist 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 really, outside and independently of human consciousness and forms a special world, different from the sensual world of individual phenomena. This special world of the general is by its nature spiritual, ideal, and is primary in relation to the world of individual things.

There is a grain of truth in each of these two views, 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 in a different way than the individual exists. And this otherness of the being of the general does not at all consist in the fact that it forms a special world opposed to the separate world. There is no special world in common. The general does not exist by itself, not independently, but only in the individual and through the individual. On the other hand, the individual does not exist without the general.

Thus in the world there are two different types objective existence: one kind - independent existence, as the individual exists, and the second - existence only in the individual and through the individual, as the general exists. Unfortunately, in our philosophical language there are no terms for designating these two different forms of objective existence. Sometimes, however, it is said that the individual exists as such, while the general, while really existing, does not exist as such. In what follows, I will designate independent existence as self-existence, as self-existence, and existence in another and through another as other-existence, or as other-being.

In order to cognize the general (essence, law, etc.) it is necessary to "extract" it from the individual, to "purify" it from the individual, to present it in a "pure" form, i.e. in one in which it can exist only in thought. 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 other-existent, the general appears as self-existent, as separate. But this self-existence is not real, but ideal. Here before us is a separate, but not a real separate, but an ideal one.

After this digression into the theory of knowledge, we return to the problem of formation. Since each specific socio-economic formation is a common one, it can exist and always exists in the real world only in separate societies, sociohistorical organisms, and as their deep common ground, their inner essence and thus their type.

What is common 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, determines their belonging to one 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 related is derived from this fundamental commonality. That is why V. I. Lenin repeatedly defined the 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 production relations. For him, the socio-economic formation has always been a type of society taken in the unity of all its aspects. He characterizes the system of production relations as the "skeleton" of the socio-economic formation, which is always invested with the "flesh and blood" of other social relations. But this "skeleton" always contains the whole essence of this or that socio-economic formation.

Since the relations of production are objective, material, the whole system formed by them is correspondingly material. And 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 functioning and development of the 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 differ 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 in different ways, according to different laws. Therefore, from this point of view, the most important task of social science is to study the laws of functioning and development of each of the socio-economic formations, that is, to create a theory for each of them. In relation to capitalism, K. Marx tried to solve such a problem.

The only way that can lead to the creation of a theory of any formation is to identify that essential, common thing that is manifested in the development of all sociohistorical organisms of a given type. It is quite clear that it is impossible to reveal the general in phenomena without digressing from the differences between them. It is possible to reveal the internal objective necessity of any real process only by freeing it from that specific historical form in which it manifested itself, only by presenting this process in a "pure" form, in a logical form, i.e., in such a way that it can exist only in theoretical consciousness.

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

An example is Marx's Capital. This work examines the functioning and development of capitalist society, but not of any specific, concrete 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 an internal necessity, an objective law of the 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 socio-historical organism, can exist only in theory, but not in historical reality. In the latter, it exists in individual societies as their inner essence, their objective basis.

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

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

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

Our historians never understood this. In all monographs and in all textbooks on historical materialism, the structure of the formation has always been considered and its main elements have been listed: the basis, the superstructure, including social consciousness, etc. etc. to societies, then a formation in general will appear before us. But in fact, in this case, we will face not a formation in general, but society in general. While imagining that they were describing the structure of formation in general, historians were actually drawing the structure of society in general, i.e. they talked about the general thing that is inherent in all sociohistorical organisms without exception.

Any specific socio-economic formation appears in two guises: (1) it is a specific type of society and (2) it is also a society of this type in general. 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 concrete society - (2) the concept of a particular formation as a society of a generally certain type, that is, a special society - (3) the concept of society in general. Another row: (1) the concept of sociohistorical organisms as separate concrete societies - (2) the concept of specific formations as different types of sociohistorical organisms of society and - (3) the concept of a socio-economic formation in general as a type of sociohistorical organisms in general.

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

In all the works and textbooks, when the formation was defined as a society, and without indicating what kind of formation in question: a specific formation or a formation in general, it was never specified whether it was a separate society or a society in general. And often the authors, and even more so the readers, understood a formation as a separate society, which was completely absurd. And when some authors nevertheless tried to take into account that the formation is a type of society, it often turned out even worse. Here is an example from one textbook: "Each society is ... an integral organism, the so-called socio-economic formation, that is, a certain historical type of society with its own mode of production, basis and superstructure."

As a reaction to this kind of interpretation of socio-economic formations, a denial of their real existence arose. But it was due not only to the incredible confusion that existed in our literature on the question of formations. The matter was more complicated. As has already been pointed out, 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, came to the conclusion that formations do not really exist at all, that they are only logical, theoretical constructions.

To understand that socio-economic formations also exist in historical reality, but otherwise 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, they were unable to. For them, existence 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, have no self-existence. They do not self-exist, but exist differently.

In this regard, one cannot 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 undeniable fact.

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

In K. Marx's theory of socio-economic formations, each formation appears as a society of a certain type in general, and thus as a pure, ideal socio-historical organism of this type. Primitive society in general, Asiatic society in general, pure ancient society, etc. figure in this theory. 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, more high type: ancient society in general into feudal society in general, pure feudal society into pure capitalist society, etc. Accordingly, human society as a whole appears in theory as society in general - as one single pure socio-historical organism, the stages of development of which are societies in general of a certain type: pure primitive, pure Asiatic, pure antique, pure feudal and pure capitalist.

But in historical reality, human society has never been one single socio-historical organism. It has always represented a huge multitude 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 common thing that is inherent in all socio-historical organisms that 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 takes place in any science. After all, each of them takes the essence of phenomena in its pure form, and in this form the essence never exists in reality, because each of them considers necessity, regularity, law in its pure form, but there are no pure laws in the world.

Therefore, the most important thing in any science is what is commonly called the interpretation of a theory. It consists in revealing how necessity, which appears in theory in its pure form, manifests itself in reality. As applied to the theory of formations, the question is how a scheme that claims to reproduce the objective necessity of the development of human society as a whole, that is, of all existing and existing socio-historical organisms, is realized in history. Does it represent an ideal model for the development of each socio-historical organism, taken separately, or only all of them taken together?

In our literature, the question of whether the Marxist scheme for the change of socio-economic formations is 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 of individual constituent sociors, has never been stated in any distinct form. This is largely due to the fact that Marxist theory lacked the concept of a socio-historical organism, and thus the concept of a system of socio-historical organisms. Accordingly, it never made a clear enough 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 Theoretically, it was not set, but in practice it was nevertheless solved. In fact, it was believed that the Marxian scheme of development and change of socio-economic formations had to be realized in the evolution of each individual specific society, i.e., each socio-historical organism. As a result, world history appeared as a set of histories of a multitude of 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 Historical works, this view was expressed with the utmost clarity. “K. 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 recurring trend: all countries pass through their history the same stages. The most common features of these stages are expressed in the concept of "socio-economic formation." And further: "It follows from this concept that all peoples, regardless of the characteristics of their historical development, inevitably go through basically the same formations."

Thus, the change of socio-economic formations was conceived as occurring exclusively within socio-historical organisms. Accordingly, socio-economic formations acted primarily as stages of development not of human society as a whole, but of individual socio-historical organisms. The only reason to consider them as 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 such an understanding of history could not but see that there were facts that did not fit into their ideas. But they mainly paid attention only to those of these facts that could be interpreted as a "pass" by this or that "people" of this or that socio-economic formation, and explained them as an always possible and even inevitable deviation from the norm, caused by the confluence of certain specific historical circumstances.

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

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

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

If in Western Europe XVI-XX centuries. If there was (and even then not always) a change in the types of socio-historical organisms while maintaining themselves as special units of historical development, then, for example, the Ancient East was characterized by the opposite picture: the emergence and disappearance of socio-historical organisms without changing their type. The newly emerged socio-historical organisms in their type, i.e. formation affiliation, did not differ in any way from the dead.

World history does not know of a single socio-historical organism that would "pass through" not only just all the formations, but at least three of them. On the other hand, we know many socio-historical organisms in the development of which there was no change of formations at all. They arose as socio-historical organisms of one specific type and disappeared without undergoing any changes in this respect. They arose, for example, as Asian and disappeared as Asian, appeared as ancient and perished as ancient.

I have already noted that the absence of the concept of a socio-historical organism in the Marxist theory of history 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 large 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 understood as a system of socio-historical organisms and, finally, the entire historical sequence of socio-historical organisms that have changed in a given territory. It was this sequence that was most often meant when they tried to show that a given "country" had "passed through" all or almost all formations. And almost always this sequence was implied when the words "regions", "oblasts", "zones" were used.

A means of conscious, and more often unconscious disguise of 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, it was said as a matter of course that all peoples, without the slightest exception, "passed through" the primitive communal formation. At the same time, even such an undoubted fact was completely ignored that all modern ethnic communities (peoples) of Europe were formed only in a class society.

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

It was all the above facts that gave the opponents of Marxism a basis for declaring the materialist understanding of history as a purely speculative scheme, in striking contradiction with historical reality. Indeed, they believed, if socio-economic formations in the overwhelming majority of cases do not act as stages in the development of socio-historical organisms, then by the same token they by no means can 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. Undoubtedly, the classics of Marxism have such statements that allow just such, and not any other interpretation.

"Overall result which I arrived at, - wrote K. Marx in his famous preface "On the Critique of Political Economy", containing an exposition of the foundations of historical materialism, - and which then served as a guiding thread in my further research, can be briefly formulated as follows. In the social production of their lives, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - relations of production, which correspond to a certain stage in the 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 correspond. public consciousness... At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - which is only the legal expression of the latter - with the property relations within which they have hitherto developed. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into their fetters. Then comes the era of social revolution. With a change in the economic basis, a revolution takes place more or less rapidly in the entire vast superstructure ... Not a single social formation perishes before all the productive forces have developed, for which it gives enough scope and new higher production relations never appear before they mature. material conditions of their existence in the bowels of the old society.

This statement of K. Marx can be understood in such a way that the change of social formations always occurs within society, and not only society in general, but each specific individual society. And he has many such statements. Outlining his views, V.I. Lenin wrote: "Each such system of production relations is, according to Marx's theory, a special social organism, having special laws of its origin, functioning and transition into higher form, transformation into another social organism. "In essence, speaking of social organisms, V.I. Lenin means not so much real socio-historical organisms as socio-economic formations that really exist in the minds of researchers as social organisms, but, of course, 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 above, K. Marx also has others. Thus, in a letter to the editors of Otechestvennye Zapiski, he objected to N.K. Mikhailovsky’s attempt to turn his “historical sketch of the rise of capitalism in Western Europe into a historical and philosophical theory of the universal path along which all peoples are fatally doomed to follow, no matter what were the historical conditions in which they find themselves, in order to eventually arrive at that economic formation which, together with the greatest flourishing of the productive forces of social labor, ensures the fullest development of man. But this idea was not concretized by K. Marx and was practically ignored.

Outlined by K. Marx in the preface to the "Critique of Political Economy", the scheme of the change of formations is to a certain extent consistent with what we know about the transition from primitive society to the first class - Asian. But it does not work at all when we are trying to understand how the second class formation, the ancient one, arose. It was not at all that new productive forces had matured in the depths of Asiatic society, which became crowded within the framework of the old production relations, and that as a result a social revolution took place, as a result of which Asiatic society turned into ancient society. Nothing even remotely similar happened. No new productive forces have arisen in the depths of Asiatic society. Not a single Asian society, taken by itself, has been transformed into an ancient one. Antique societies appeared in territories where societies of the Asiatic type either never existed at all, or where they had long since disappeared, and these new class societies arose out of 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 are not two successive phases of development, but two parallel types of society. Both of these options equally grew out of primitive society, and they owe their difference to the peculiarities of the geographical environment.

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

And those of our historians who did not want to put up with the position that the ancient Eastern and ancient societies belonged to the same formation, inevitably, most often without even realizing it themselves, again and again resurrected the idea of ​​G. V. Plekhanov. 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.

Things were not much better with the application of Marx's scheme of changing formations to the transition from ancient to feudal society. Recent centuries The existence of ancient society is 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, crafts and arts, the reduction of population, the desolation of cities, the return of agriculture to a lower level - such," he wrote, "was the end result of Roman world domination." As he repeatedly emphasized, ancient society had reached a "dead end". The way out of this impasse was opened only by the Germans, who, having crushed the Western Roman Empire, introduced a new mode of production - the feudal one. And they could do it because they were barbarians. But having written all this, F. Engels in no way coordinated 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 the ancient Eastern and ancient society. They proceeded from the fact that the society of the Germans was indisputably barbarian, that is, pre-class, and that it was from it that feudalism arose. From this 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 harmonize 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 same formation - secondary. Such an understanding was put forward at one time by the Sinologist L. S. Vasiliev and the Egyptologist I. A. Stuchevsky.

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

The idea of ​​one pre-capitalist class formation was usually combined explicitly or implicitly with the idea of ​​multilinear 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 VIII AD. until the middle of the 19th century. AD ancient, feudal and capitalist stages ended in collapse, a number of scientists concluded that in the case of the change of slave ownership by feudalism, and the latter by capitalism, we are dealing not with a general pattern, but only with the 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 such views sought (some sincerely and some not so much) to prove that the recognition of the multi-linear nature of development is in full agreement 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 the history of mankind as a single process that constitutes the essence of the theory of socio-economic formations. Not without reason, L.S. Vasiliev, who at one time argued in every possible way that the recognition of the multi-linearity of development does not in the least diverge from the Marxist view of history, later, when the forced imposition of historical materialism was over, acted as an ardent opponent of the theory of socio-economic formations and, in general, materialistic understanding stories.

Recognition of the multi-linearity of historical development, to which some domestic historians even at the time of the formally undivided domination of Marxism, consistently carried out, inevitably leads to a denial of the unity of world history, to a pluralist understanding of it.

But at the same time, it is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that the outwardly seemingly purely unitary understanding of history outlined above also, in the final analysis, turns into multi-linearism and the actual denial of the unity of history. After all, in essence, world history, with this understanding, acts as simple sum parallel flowing completely independent processes of development of individual socio-historical organisms. The unity of world history is thereby reduced only to the generality of the laws that determine the development of socio-historical organisms. Thus, before us are many lines of development, but only completely identical. This, in fact, is not so much unilinearity as multi-linearity.

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 thus 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 the stages of progressive development in different societies was far from being synchronous. Let's say, by the beginning of the 19th century, some societies were still primitive, others were pre-class, still others were "Asiatic", others were feudal, and still others were already capitalist. The question is, 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 it was possible to judge what stage of progress human society as a whole had reached in a given period of time. And the supporters of the orthodox version did not give any answer to this question. They totally bypassed it. Some of them did not notice him at all, while others tried not to notice him.

If we sum up some results, we can say that a significant drawback of the orthodox version of the theory of socio-economic formations is that it focuses only on "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 the "horizontal" connections, ie. ties between socio-historical organisms coexisting in space, synchronous, inter-socior ties, then in the theory of socio-economic formations they were not given importance. Such an approach made it impossible to understand the progressive development of human society as a single whole, the change in the stages of this development on the scale of all mankind, that is, a true understanding of the unity of world history, closed the road to genuine historical unitarism.

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 consists in looking at world history as one single process of the progressive, ascending development of mankind. Such an understanding of history presupposes the existence of stages in the development of mankind as a whole. The unitary-stage approach arose long ago. It found its embodiment, for example, in dividing the history of mankind into such stages as savagery, barbarism and civilization (A. Ferguson and others), as well as in subdividing this history into hunting and gathering, pastoral (cattle breeding), agricultural and trading industrial periods (A. Turgot, A. Smith and others). The same approach found its expression in the first three, and then four world-historical epochs in the development of civilized mankind: ancient Eastern, ancient, medieval and new (L. Bruni, F. Biondo, K. Koehler, 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. Such a variant of a unitary-stage understanding of history should most accurately be called unitary-plural-stage. But this word is too clumsy. Since the words "linear" or "linear" are sometimes used to denote this view of history, I will call it linear-stage. It is precisely this understanding of development that is practically most often meant when one speaks of evolutionism in the historical and ethnological sciences.

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

Due to the fact that each such historical formation starts everything from the beginning, it cannot introduce anything fundamentally new into history. It follows from this that all such formations are absolutely equal, equivalent. None of them in terms of development is neither lower nor higher than all the others. Each of these formations develops, and for the time being even progressively, but humanity as a whole does not evolve, and even more so, it does not progress. There is an eternal rotation of many squirrel wheels.

It is not difficult to understand that, according to this view, there is neither human society as a whole, nor world history as a single process. Accordingly, there can be no question of the stages of development of human society as a whole, and thus of the epochs of world history. Therefore, this approach to history is called plural-cyclic.

The pluralist understanding of history did not emerge today. At its origins are J.A. Gobineau and G. Ruckert. The main provisions of historical pluralism were quite clearly formulated by N.Ya. Danilevsky, brought to the extreme limit by O. Spengler, largely softened by A.J. Toynbee and, finally, acquired caricature forms in the works of L.N. Gumilyov. These thinkers called the historical formations they identified differently: civilizations (J.A. Gobineau, A.J. Toynbee), cultural-historical individuals (G. Ruckert), cultural-historical types (N.Ya. Danilevsky), cultures or great cultures (O. Spengler), ethnoi and superethnoi (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 plural-cyclic approach (not to mention their numerous admirers and epigones) were of no particular scientific value. But valuable was the criticism to which they subjected the linear-stage understanding of the historical process.

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 have shown that humanity is actually divided into several largely independent formations, that there is not one, but several subjects of the historical process, and thus, without realizing it, 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 singled out as independent units of historical development not so much socio-historical organisms as their systems. And although they themselves were not engaged in identifying the links between the socio-historical organisms that form this or that particular system, such a question inevitably arose. Even when they, like O. Spengler, insisted on the absence of connections between the selected units of history, it still made one think about the relationship between them, oriented towards the identification of "horizontal" connections.

The writings of historical pluralists not only drew attention to the connections between simultaneously existing separate societies and their systems, but also forced us to take a fresh look at the "vertical" connections in history. It became clear that they could by no means be reduced to relations between stages of development within certain individual societies, that history is discrete not only in space but also in time, that the subjects of the historical process arise and disappear.

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

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

To date, the plural-cyclical approach to history (usually called "civilizational" in our country) has exhausted all its possibilities and has become a thing of the past. Attempts to revive it, which are now being made in our science, cannot lead to anything but embarrassment. Articles and speeches of our "civilizationists" clearly testify to this. In essence, they all represent a transfusion from empty to empty.

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

5. Relay-formational approach to world history

At present, 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 the generality of laws, but would imply an understanding of it as a single whole. The real unity of history is inseparable from its integrity.

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

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

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

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

There can be only one way out of the situation: the creation of an approach in which stages and intersocioral induction would be synthesized. No general reasoning about stadiality can help in creating such a new approach. A fairly clear stadial typology of sociohistorical organisms should be taken as the basis. To date, only one of the existing stage typologies of society deserves attention - the historical-materialistic one.

This does not mean at all that it should be accepted in the form in which it now exists in the works of both the founders of Marxism and their numerous followers. An important feature put by K. Marx and F. Engels as the basis of typology is the socio-economic structure of a socio-historical organism. It is necessary to single out socio-economic types of socio-historical organisms.

The founders of the materialistic understanding of history singled out only the main types of society, which were simultaneously stages of world-historical development. These types were called socio-economic formations. But besides these main types, there are also non-basic socio-economic types, which I will call socio-economic paraformations (from the Greek para - near, near) and socio-economic proformations (from Latin pro - instead). 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 essential. It is important that they all represent socio-economic types of socio-historical organisms.

Starting from a certain point, the most important feature of world history has been the uneven development of sociohistorical organisms and, accordingly, their systems. There was a time when all sociohistorical organisms belonged to the same type. This is the era of early primitive society. Then part of the societies turned into late primitive ones, while the rest continued to retain the same type. With the emergence of pre-class societies, societies began to exist simultaneously, at least three different types. With the transition to civilization, the first class socio-historical 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 it political (from the Greek politia - state). With the emergence of ancient society, class sociohistorical organisms arose of at least one more type.

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

We need concepts that would be suitable for all eras. Socio-historical organisms of the most advanced type for a particular era, I will call superior (from Latin super - over, above), and all the rest - inferior (from Latin infra - under). Of course, the difference between the two is relative. Sociors that were superior in one era may become inferior in another. Many (but not all) inferior organisms belong to types that were on the highway of world-historical development, but whose time has passed. With the advent of a higher main type, they turned into extra main 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 inter-socior induction above. 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 plural, because inferior organisms are usually affected not by a single superior socior, but by their whole system. The influence of superior organisms and their systems on inferior organisms and their systems I will call superinduction.

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

The concepts of superinduction have been created only in our time and in relation only to a new and recent history. These are some concepts of modernization (Europeanization, Westernization), as well as theories of dependent development and world-systems. In the concepts of modernization, progressization comes to the fore, in the concepts of dependent development - stagnation. The classical world-systems approach tried to uncover the full complexity of the superinduction process. A peculiar assessment of modern superinduction is given in the concept of Eurasianism and in modern Islamic fundamentalism. In them, this process is characterized as regression or even deconstruction.

As applied to more distant times, the developed concepts of superinduction were not created. But this process was noticed by diffusionists and absolutized by hyperdiffusionists. The supporters of pan-Egyptism painted a picture of the "Egyptization" of the world, while the advocates of pan-Babylonism painted a picture of its "Babylonization". Historians who stuck to the facts did not create this kind of concept. But they could not fail to 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 occurred 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 the inferior organism may change. In some cases, it can turn into a sociohistorical organism of the same type as those that act on it, i.e. rise to a higher stage of mainline development. This process of "pulling up" inferior organisms to the level of superior ones can be called superiorization. In the concepts of modernization, this option is meant. Societies lagging behind in their development (traditional, agrarian, pre-modern) turn 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 highway, but on one of the side paths of historical development. This type is not main, but lateral (from Latin lateralis - lateral). I will call this process lateralization. Naturally, lateral types are not socio-economic formations, but paraformations.

If superiorization is taken into account, 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 have lagged behind in their development to the levels reached by it. There is an eternal center and an eternal periphery. But this does not solve the problem.

As has already been pointed out, there is not a single sociohistorical organism in whose development more than two formations would change. And there are many sociors within which the change of formations did not take place at all.

It can be assumed that when a group of superior organisms "pulled up" a certain number of inferior organisms to their level, the latter, in their subsequent development, turned out to be able to independently rise to a new, higher stage of development, while the former turned out to be incapable of this and thus lagged 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, there is a kind of transfer of the historical baton 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 no change in more than two formations has been observed in the development of any sociohistorical organism 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. That's why complete solution problems and such a concept does not give.

But in addition to those discussed above, there is another development option. And under it, the system of superior sociohistorical organisms influences inferior sociors. But these latter, as a result of such influence, undergo more than a peculiar transformation. They do not change into organisms of the same type that affect them. Superization does not occur.

But the type of inferior organisms changes in this case. Inferior organisms turn into sociors of a type that, if approached purely externally, should be ranked among the lateral ones. This type of society is indeed not a formation, but a paraformation. But this progressive society, which has arisen as a result of progressization, turns out to be capable of further independent progress, and of a special kind at that. As a result of the action of already 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 impact of which served as an impetus for such development. This phenomenon can be called ultrasuperiorization.

If, as a result of superiorization, inferior sociohistorical organisms "pull up" to the level of superior sociors, then, as a result of ultrasuperiorization, they "jump over" this level and reach an even higher one. A group of sociohistorical organisms appears that belong to a socio-economic formation higher than that to which the former superior sociors belonged. Now the former are becoming superior, mainline, and the latter are turning into inferior, extramain. There is a change in socio-economic formations, and it occurs not within certain sociohistorical organisms, but on the scale of human society as a whole.

It can be said that at the same time, a change in the types of society also took place within sociohistorical organisms. Indeed, within the inferior sociohistorical organisms, one socio-economic type of society was replaced by another, and then another. But not one of the types of society that changed within these sociors was the formation that previously dominated, which was previously the highest. The change of this previously dominant formation to a new one, to which the leading role has now passed, did not take place within one specific sociohistorical organism. It happened only on the scale of human society as a whole.

With such a change in socio-economic formations, we are faced with a genuine transfer of the historical baton from one group of sociohistorical organisms to another. The last sociors do not go through the stage at which the first ones were, they 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 takes place when the existing superior sociohistorical organisms are themselves unable to transform into organisms of a higher type.

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

But in addition to the above, there is another type of ultrasuperiorization known to history. It took place when, on the one hand, geosocial organisms collided, and on the other, demosocial ones. There can be no question of joining the demosocior to the geosocior. It is only possible to add to the territory of the geosociore the territory where the demosocior lives. In this case, the demosocior, if he continues to remain on this territory, is included, introduced into the composition of the geosocior, continuing to be preserved as a special society. This is a demosocial introduction (lat. introductio - introduction). It is also possible that demosocciors can penetrate and settle on the territory of a geosocio - demosocioral infiltration (from lat in - in and cf. lat. filtratio - filtering). In both cases, only later, and not always and not soon, does the destruction of the demosocior and the direct entry of its members into the composition of the geosocior take place. This is geo-social assimilation, it is also demo-social annihilation.

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

The first option is that the demosocciors are destroyed, and their members are part of the geosocio, i.e., geosoccior assimilation, or demosoccior annihilation, occurs. The second option is that the geosociore is destroyed, and the people who made it up become members of demosocior organisms. This is demosocial assimilation, or geosocial annihilation.

In the third option, there is a synthesis of geo-social and demo-social socio-economic and other social structures. As a result of this synthesis, a new type of society emerges. This type of society is different both from the type of the original geo-socio and the type of the original demo-socio. Such a society may turn out to be capable of independent internal development, as a result of which it rises to a higher stage of mainline development than the original superior geosocial organism. As a consequence of this ultrasuperiorization there will be a change 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 turn into a society of a higher type. Such a process took place during the replacement of antiquity by the Middle Ages. Historians at the same time speak of a Romano-Germanic synthesis.

Ultrasuperiorization in both of its variants is a process of handing over the baton on the historical highway from superior sociohistorical organisms of the old type to superior sociohistorical organisms of a 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, as applied to the theory of socio-economic formations, the question was posed: is the pattern of changing formations an ideal model for the development of each socio-historical organism, taken separately, or does it express the internal necessity for the development of only all of them taken together, i.e. ...only the entire human society as a whole? As has already been shown, practically all Marxists were inclined towards the first answer, which made the theory of socio-economic formations one of the options for a linear-stage understanding of history.

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

Of course, the relay-formational understanding of history is emerging only now. But the idea of ​​a historical relay race, and even a relay-stage approach to world history, was born quite a long time ago, although it never enjoyed wide recognition. It arose from the need to combine the ideas of the unity of mankind and the progressive nature of its history with the facts that testify to the division of mankind into separate entities that arise, flourish and perish.

It first appeared 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 the Lectures on the Philosophy of History by G. W. F. Hegel, and in the first half of the 19th century. was developed in the works of such Russian thinkers as P.Ya. Chaadaev, I.V. Kireevsky, V.F. Odoevsky, A.S. Khomyakov, A.I. Herzen, P.L. Lavrov. After that, he was almost completely forgotten.

Now it's time to revive it on a new basis. A new version of the relay-stage approach is the relay-formational understanding of world history. This is a modern form of the theory of socio-economic formations that corresponds 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 complete picture of world history, which would be more in line with the facts accumulated historical science than all currently in existence. Such an attempt was made by me in a number of works, to which I refer the reader.

See for example: Civilizations in the "third" world ("round table") // Vostok. 1992. (3. p.14-15

For details about all this, see: Semenov Yu.I. Secrets of Clio. A concise introduction to the philosophy of history. M., 1996.

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

In the theory of socio-economic formations, K. Marx and F. Engels singled out material relations from all the apparent chaos of social relations, and within them, first of all, economic, production relations as primary. In this regard, two extremely important facts emerged.

Firstly, it turned out that in each specific society, production relations not only form a more or less integral system, but are also the basis, the foundation of other social relations and the social organism as a whole.

Secondly, it turned out that economic relations in the history of mankind existed in several basic types: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist. Therefore, some specific societies, despite the obvious differences between the council (for example, Athenian, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian), belong to the same stage of historical development (slave-owning), if they have the same type of economic basis as their economic basis. relations.

As a result, the entire set of social systems observed in history was reduced to several main types, called socio-economic formations (SEF). At the foundation of each OEF are certain productive forces - tools and objects of labor, plus the people who put them into action. In our philosophical literature for decades, the foundation of the GEF was understood as the economic mode of production as a whole. Thus, there was a mixing of the foundation with the basis. interests scientific analysis require separation of these concepts. Economic relations are the basis of the OEF, i.e. e. relations between people that develop in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods. In the conditions of a class society, relations between classes become the essence and core of economic relations. What are the main elements that make it possible to present the socio-economic formation as an integral, living organism?

First, economic relations to a large extent determine the power that rises above them. superstructure - a set of political, moral, legal, artistic, philosophical, religious views of society and the relations and institutions corresponding to these views . It is in relation to the superstructure, as well as to other non-economic elements of the formation, that economic relations act as the economic basis of society.

Secondly, the composition of the formation includes ethnic and socio-ethnic forms of the community of people, determined in their emergence, evolution and disappearance by both sides of the mode of production: both the nature of economic relations and the stage of development of the productive forces.

Thirdly, the composition of the formation includes the type and form of the family, which are also predetermined at each historical stage by both sides of the mode of production.

As a result, it can be said that socio-economic formation - this is a society at a certain stage of historical development, characterized by a specific economic basis and the corresponding political and spiritual superstructures, historical forms of community of people, type and form of the family. It is not uncommon for opponents of the formational paradigm to claim that the concept of the EEF is simply a "thinking scheme"; if not fiction. The basis for such an accusation is the fact that in a "pure" form in no country the CEF is found: there are always such public relations and institutions that belong to other formations. And if so, the conclusion is made, then the very concept of GEF loses its meaning. In this case, to explain the stages of formation and development of societies, they resort to civilizational (A. Toynbee) and cultural (O. Spengler, P. Sorokin) approaches.

Of course, there are no absolutely “pure” formations, because the unity general concept and a particular phenomenon is always contradictory. This is the case in natural science as well. Any particular society is always in the process of development, and therefore, along with what determines the appearance of the dominant formation, there are remnants of old or embryos of new formations in it. It is also necessary to take into account the discrepancy between the economic, socio-political and cultural levels of development of individual countries and regions, which also causes intraformational differences and deviations from the standard. However, the doctrine of the GEF provides the key to understanding the unity and diversity of human history.

Unity historical process is expressed primarily in the successive change of socio-economic formations with each other. This unity is also manifested in the fact that all social organisms based on this mode of production, with objective necessity, reproduce all other typical features of the corresponding GEF. But since a divergence is always inevitable between the logical, theoretical, ideal, on the one hand, and the concrete historical, on the other, the development of individual countries and peoples also differs significantly. diversity. The main manifestations of the diversity of socio-historical development:

Local features and even varieties of formational development of individual countries and entire regions are revealed. One can recall, for example, numerous discussions on the problem of "West - East".

Specific transitional epochs from one OEF to another have their own specifics. For example, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, which was revolutionary in its essence, in some countries was carried out in a revolutionary form, while in others (Russia, the Prussian part of Germany, Japan) it took place in an evolutionary form.

Not every nation necessarily passes through all socio-economic formations. East Slavs, Arabs, Germanic tribes at one time passed the slave-owning formation; Today, many peoples of Asia and Africa are trying to "step over" a series of formations, or at least two of them (slave ownership, feudalism). Such a surge of historical backwardness becomes possible thanks to the critical assimilation of the experience of more advanced peoples. However, this “external” can only be superimposed on an “internal” that is suitably prepared for this implementation. Otherwise, conflicts between traditional culture and innovations are inevitable.

Materialistic approach in the study of civilizations

Within the framework of this approach, civilization appears as a higher level of development that goes beyond the limits of the "natural society" with its natural productive forces.

L. Morgan about the signs of a civilizational society: the development of productive forces, the functional division of labor, the expansion of the exchange system, the emergence of private ownership of land, the concentration of wealth, the split of society into classes, the formation of the state.

L. Morgan, F. Engels identified three major periods in the history of mankind: savagery, barbarism, civilization. Civilization is the achievement of some higher level than barbarism.

F. Engels about the three great eras of civilizations: the first great era- ancient, the second - feudalism, the third - capitalism. The formation of civilization in connection with the emergence of a division of labor, the separation of craft from agriculture, the formation of classes, the transition from a tribal system to a state based on social inequality. Two types of civilizations: antagonistic (the period of class societies) and non-antagonistic (the period of socialism and communism).

East and West as different types of civilizational development

The "traditional" society of the East (eastern traditional civilization), its main characteristics: the inseparability of property and administrative power, the subordination of society to the state, the absence of private property and the rights of citizens, the complete absorption of the individual by the collective, the economic and political domination of the state, the presence of despotic states. The influence of Western (technogenic) civilization.

Achievements and contradictions of Western civilization, its characteristic features: market economy, private property, rule of law, democratic social order, the priority of the individual and his interests, various forms of class organization (trade unions, parties, etc.) - Comparative characteristics West and East, their main features, values.

Civilization and culture. Different approaches to understanding the phenomenon of culture, their connection. Main approaches: activity, axiological (value), semiotic, sociological, humanistic. Contrasting concepts "civilization" and "culture"(O. Spengler, X. Ortega y Gasset, D. Bell, N. A. Berdyaev and others).

The ambiguity of the definitions of culture, its relationship with the concept of "civilization":

• - civilization as a certain stage in the development of the culture of individual peoples and regions (L. Tonnoy, P. Sorokin);
• - civilization as a specific stage of social development, which is characterized by the emergence of cities, writing, the formation of national-state formations (L. Morgan, F. Engels);
• - civilization as the value of all cultures (K. Jaspers);
• - civilization as the final moment in the development of culture, its "decline" and decline (O. Spengler);
• - civilization as a high level of human material activity: tools, technologies, economic and political relations and institutions;
• - culture as a manifestation of the spiritual essence of man (N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov), civilization as the highest manifestation of the spiritual essence of man;
• - culture is not civilization.

culture, according to P. S. Gurevich, it is a historically determined level of development of society, creative forces, human abilities, expressed in the types of organization and activities of people, as well as in the material and spiritual values ​​\u200b\u200bcreated by them. Culture as a set of material and cultural achievements of mankind in all spheres of public life; as a specific characteristic of human society, as something that distinguishes man from animals.

The most important component of culture is the value-normative system. Value - this property of a particular social object, phenomenon to satisfy the needs, desires, interests of a person, society; this is a personally colored attitude to the world, arising not only on the basis of knowledge and information, but also on a person’s own life experience; the significance of the objects of the surrounding world for a person: class, group, society, humanity as a whole.

Culture occupies a special place in the structure of civilizations. Culture is a way of individual and social life, expressed in a concentrated form, the degree of development of both a person and social relations, as well as one's own being.

Differences between culture and civilization according to S. A. Babushkin, are as follows:

• - in historical time, culture is a broader category than civilization;
• - culture is part of civilization;
• - types of culture do not always coincide with the types of civilizations;
• - they are smaller, more fractional than the types of civilizations.

The theory of socio-economic formations of K. Marx and F. Engels

Socio-economic formation - it is a society at a certain stage of historical development, using a certain mode of production.

The concept of linear development of the world-historical process.

World history is a set of histories of many socio-historical organisms, each of which must "go through" all socio-economic formations. Production relations are primary, the foundation of all other social relations. Many social systems are reduced to several basic types - socio-economic formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, communist .

Three social formations (primary, secondary and tertiary) are designated by K. Marx as archaic (primitive), economic and communist. K. Marx includes the Asian, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois mode of production in the economic formation.

Formation - a certain stage in the historical progress of society, its natural and gradual approach to communism.

Structure and main elements of the formation.

Social relations are divided into material and ideological. Basis - the economic structure of society, the totality of production relations. material relations- production relations that arise between people in the process of production, exchange and distribution of material goods. The nature of production relations is determined not by the will and consciousness of people, but by achieved level development of productive forces. The unity of production relations and productive forces forms a specific for each formation mode of production. Superstructure - a set of ideological (political, legal, etc.) relations, related views, theories, ideas, i.e. ideology and psychology of various social groups or society as a whole, as well as relevant organizations and institutions - the state, political parties, public organizations. The structure of the socio-economic formation includes social relations society, certain forms of life, family, lifestyle. The superstructure depends on the basis and affects the economic basis, and the relations of production affect the productive forces.

Separate elements of the structure of the socio-economic formation are interconnected and experience mutual influence. As socio-economic formations develop, they change, the transition from one formation to another through a social revolution, the resolution of antagonistic contradictions between the productive forces and production relations, between the base and the superstructure. Within the framework of the communist socio-economic formation, socialism develops into communism.

• Cm.: Gurevich A. Ya. The theory of formation and the reality of history // Questions of Philosophy. 1991. No. 10; Zakharov A. Once again about the theory of formations // Social sciences and modernity. 1992. No. 2.

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

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

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

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

The logic here is this. The main problem for society is the production of the means of life (food, housing, etc.). This production is always carried out with the help of tools. Certain objects of labor are also involved.

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

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

In particular, for thousands of years a rather low level of their development, the technical level of tools that allowed their individual use, led to the dominance of private property (in various forms).

The concept of the theory, its supporters

In the 19th century productive forces acquired a qualitatively different character. The technological revolution caused the massive use of machines. Their use was possible only by joint, collective efforts. Production acquired a directly social character. As a result, ownership also had to be made common, to resolve the contradiction between the social character of production and the private form of appropriation.

Remark 1

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

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

Remark 2

Society has gone through several formations: the original, slave, feudal, bourgeois.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

conclusions

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

Remark 3

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

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

In the scientific thought of the past and present, many concepts and theories have developed on the problem of the typology of the state.

The founders of Marxism formulated the position according to which the definition of one or another type of state is possible only in connection with the study and development of class society.

In contrast to bourgeois researchers who consider society "in general", K. Marx believed that in real history such an abstract society does not exist, but there is a society that is at a certain stage of historical development. He developed the concept of a socio-economic formation, which is a prerequisite and basis for theoretical generalizations that make it possible to present individual aspects of social life as moments of the whole - outside this concept it is impossible to bring together the diversity of empirical facts of human history.

K. Marx put an end to the view of society as a mechanical aggregate of individuals, allowing all sorts of changes at the will of the authorities (or, anyway, at the will of society and the government), arising and changing by chance, and for the first time put sociology on a scientific basis, establishing the concept of social economic formation as a set of data of production relations, having established that the development of such formations is a natural-historical process.

Representatives of the Marxist school never reduced the concept of a socio-economic formation only to a system of production relations, as is sometimes noted in modern journalistic literature, but considered them in the unity of all its aspects. The socio-economic formation, being a scientific abstraction, gives an idea of ​​its typical features. This applies both to the characterization of the entire social system and to the consideration of its constituent elements - production relations, social structure, a political superstructure, serves as a criterion for substantiating the corresponding types of the latter.

The concept of a socio-economic formation can be defined as a society at a certain stage of historical development, taken in the unity of all its aspects, with its inherent mode of production, economic system and a superstructure towering above it.

One of the main features of the Marxist interpretation of the socio-economic formation is that it reflects, in their opinion, the most important, essential phenomena, i.e., only such fundamental features of social orders that are basically repeated in the same way in different countries and which can be generalized .

The development of a definition of a socio-economic formation allows representatives of the Marxist school to distinguish between the economic structure and the formation itself, between different social systems.

It is quite clear that a socio-economic formation in its pure form, that is, as a special social organism, can exist only in theory, but not in historical reality.

The concept of a socio-economic formation, on the one hand, is a theoretical abstraction that makes it possible to detect stages in the development of world history. Such a concept of socio-economic formation makes it possible to separate one period from another, to single out qualitatively unique stages in the history of society, each of which has specific laws of its movement.

There is no doubt that the doctrine of socio-economic formations and the typification of states deserves close attention and analysis in the periodization of the development of human history. But we must not forget the fact that the change of socio-economic formations and types of states occurs synchronously (with the exception of the longest period of existence of the primitive communal system on earth), but already with the advent of the slave-owning type of state, the simultaneous existence of two or more types of states begins. Hence the concept of socio-economic formation can reveal the essence of the historical process not in all countries, but only in one specific country or group of countries.

The theory of socio-economic formations contains the concept of the unity of the world historical process and assumes a natural change in the types of states. In the course of changing socio-economic formations, there is also a consistent change in the types of states. The theory of socio-economic formations is aimed at establishing the patterns of dependence of the class essence of the state on the system of socio-economic relations that form the basis of a particular formation.

The typification of state-legal systems forms the basis for scientific knowledge of the enormous variety of constantly developing specific political phenomena, and is included in the methodology of Marxist-Leninist jurisprudence. It develops certain methods of cognition of the state and law, methods of revealing their essence.

The most important feature of the scientific typology of the state, which is based on the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations, is that it is based on the nature of the connections of the state and law with other phenomena of social life, that is, on the identification of social laws. Among them, for example, is the objective relationship between the state and the rights of a class society.

The development of the concept of "type of state" in the Marxist school is connected, first of all, with the essential characteristics of the state, and not with the content. In the Marxist state-legal literature there is no single definition of the type of state. The difficulty in developing the concept of the type of state is, firstly, that the material of social life is extensive and constantly increasing, primarily due to new countries embarking on the path of independent statehood building.

Marx's generalized periodization divides historical development into three stages. The first includes primitive society, in which there is no private ownership of the means of production and labor is directly socialized. This type of historical development rests on the immaturity of the individual man, who has not yet broken away from the umbilical cord of natural ancestral ties with other people.

The second stage is antagonistic societies, in which the heap process takes the social form of relations of exploitation of man by man. Antagonistic societies are divided into two groups:

• a) ancient and feudal societies in which there are direct relations of domination and subordination;
• b) capitalist society, where production relations take the form of real dependence of direct producers on the products of labor.

The third stage is the future communist society. The social relations of people to their labor remain here transparently clear, both in production and in distribution.

Under the historical type of the state, he understands the system of essential features of states of the same social economic formation, expressing the commonality of their economic basis, class essence and social purpose.

From this definition it follows that each socio-economic formation needs a certain type of state, while the pre-class and post-class socio-economic formation excludes the existence of a state.

One of the main ideas of the Marxist theory of formations is the correspondence between the invariant systems of each layer of social life - the correspondence of the invariant of the state to the invariant of the economy, the invariant of spiritual life - the invariant of the economy and the invariant of the state.

The theory of formations explains certain changes in history and explains the existence of certain types of societies. In this sense, it is a theory of history and even general theory stories. Unlike the theory of separate formations, for example, the theory of capitalism. The theory of each separate formation presupposes the existence of a theory of formations, and is not reduced to this theory.

The question of the type, which, according to the Marxist doctrine, is based on the class-essential moment, is inextricably linked with the question of the form of the state.

History shows that within the framework of one type of state, a variety of forms of the state is possible, that is, the dominance of historically defined classes can take on various political forms, some of which may prevail in a given type of state, in which the laws of a state of a certain social economic formation. Such forms of the state can be called typical, more common in this type of state. Others, not characteristic of a certain type of state, can be attributed to atypical forms of the state.

Such was the theory of K. Marx, set forth by him, due to objective circumstances (obtaining information about the East through "second hands", the poor scientific development of this problem, due, in particular, to the lack of factual material, fragmentation, Marx's lack of study to the end of the Eastern (Asian) production type). which replaced theory in the 20th century. another, already well-known theory about the unconditional priority of the class nature of state formation within the framework of a five-term scheme of socio-economic formations, which turned out to be very attractive and meets the interests of the intensified political struggle in Europe and in Russia, today, as historical practice has shown, is much less preferable and far from being so universal , as wanted by the vulgar dogmatists - the followers of Marx's teachings.