In Russian historiography, two conceptual approaches to the study of history have developed: formational from the middle of the 19th century and civilizational since the beginning of the 20th century.
The adjective "formational" comes from the word "formation", which in Greek means "step". The developers of the theory of formation (hereinafter TF) were K. Marx, F. Engels, and Soviet historians.
Main features of formation theory:
1. The entire history of mankind was divided into five stages: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, communist.
2. The main criterion of each formation was the dominant method of producing material goods.
3. Political, legal and ideological institutions of a certain formation corresponded to this method.
4. Society was divided into classes: exploiters and exploited.
5. The development of tools and class struggle as the “locomotive of history” were considered the main engine of progress.
Cons of formation theory:
1. The TF offered only one linear (stage-by-stage) option for the development of countries: from primitive communal to communist society.
2. There were countries and nationalities that focused on improving the material method of production (Australian aborigines, India, China, etc.). They had a culture and traditions that cannot be reduced to a material denominator. Their culture was based on the spiritual values of harmonious coexistence with the environment.
3. The priority was the study of classes and masses.
4. Practice has shown the utopian nature of ideas about a communist society.
The methodology of the formational approach is opposed to the civilizational approach. Its essence: the history of mankind is a constant coexistence, interaction and turnover of various types of civilizations, which go through a number of stages in their development: origin, flourishing, aging, extinction.
The civilizational approach has a number of strengths.
Firstly, its main advantage is the “humanization” of history. Man is the beginning and end of history.
Secondly, it is applicable to the history of any country and is focused on taking into account the specifics of each of them, i.e. it is universal.
Thirdly, the focus on taking into account specificity presupposes the idea of history as a multilinear and multivariate process.
Fourthly, the civilizational approach does not reject the unity of human history, which makes it possible to widely use the comparative historical method of research: Alexander the Great - Napoleon Bonaparte, Hitler - Stalin, etc.
Fifthly, spiritual, moral and intellectual factors are important for understanding the historical process: religion, culture, and the mentality of peoples.
Disadvantages of the civilizational approach:
1. Amorphous criteria for identifying types of civilizations: different researchers identify different criteria for assessing civilizations.
2. Insufficiently developed conceptual apparatus.
3. Universality as a disadvantage when developing specific problems.
Representatives of the civilizational approach: Englishman Robert Owen, Russian historian Nikolai Danilevsky, German scientist Oswald Spengler, English historian Arnold Toynbee; Russian emigrant who lived in the USA, Pitirim Sorokin, our compatriots: Otto Latsis, professors A.I. Malkov, L.I. Semennikova and others.
The human community, from the point of view of some scientists, began 35–40 thousand years ago. Everything was the same: the structure, the way of life, the trance culture. It's more diverse now. There are many definitions of civilization.
Civilization is a cultural archaeological layer: shards, etc. (Robert Owen), it is an open-air museum, like a huge material culture (P. Sorokin), it is a form, an image of culture (O. Spengler).
One of the best definitions was given by Arnold Toynbee: “Civilization is a single organism, all parts of which are interconnected and are in constant interaction.”
We will adhere to the definition given by the Doctor of History of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosova L. And Semennikova: “Civilization is a community of people united by fundamental spiritual and material values, having stable special features in the socio-political organization, culture, economy and a psychological sense of belonging to this community.”
According to modern historians who adhere to the civilizational approach, there are three types of civilization:
1. With a non-progressive form of existence (aboriginals in Australia, Indians in America, Eskimos, Nanais in Russia, etc.).
2. Civilization with cyclical development, or eastern type (China, India, Iran, Iraq and others).
3. Civilization with progressive development (modern Western, American and other forms).
Let's consider the third type of civilization - with progressive development. There were, according to historians, two forms of such civilization: ancient Greek and modern European.
Main features of Western civilization:
1. Man (not God) is put in first place - an individual person independent of society.
2. Government and society are separated. There is a civil society, and power is limited by legal norms. According to Socrates, “in a democracy, the best moral people should govern.”
3. The form of political structure is democracy, i.e. there is election, accountability, and turnover.
4. There is social differentiation - classes.
5. The presence of the market as a way of functioning of the economy and its regulator leads to the emergence of private property.
Is " civilization" It is most often used in modern science and journalism and comes from the Latin word “civilis”, which means “state, civil, political”.
In modern scientific literature civilization interpreted:
- as a synonym for the concept ;
- a type of society that differs from savagery and barbarism in the social division of labor, writing and a developed system of state-legal relations;
- a type of society with characteristics characteristic only of it.
Modern social science gives preference to the latter interpretation, although it does not contrast it with the other two. Thus, the concept of “civilization” has two main meanings: How separate company And How stage originated in ancient times and continues today in the development of mankind. The study of the history of society based on this concept is called civilizational approach to the analysis of human history.
Within the framework of the civilizational approach, there are several theories, among which two main ones stand out:
- local civilizations;
- world, universal civilization.
Theory of local civilizations
Theory of local civilizations studies historically established communities that occupy a certain territory and have their own characteristics of socio-economic and cultural development. Local civilizations may coincide with the borders of states, but there are exceptions, for example, Western Europe, consisting of many large and small completely independent states, is usually considered one civilization, since with all the originality of each state, they all represent one cultural-historical type.
The theory of the cyclical development of local civilizations was studied in the 20th century. sociologist P. A. Sorokin, historian A. Toynbee and others.
Thus, A. Toynbee identified more than 10 closed civilizations. Each of them went through the development stages of emergence, growth, breakdown, and decomposition. The young civilization is energetic, full of strength, helps to better meet the needs of the population, has a high rate of economic growth, and progressive spiritual values. But then these possibilities are exhausted. Economic, socio-political mechanisms, scientific, technical, educational and cultural potentials are becoming obsolete. A process of breakdown and disintegration begins, manifesting itself, in particular, in the escalation of internal civil wars. The existence of civilization ends with death, a change in the dominant culture. As a result, civilization completely disappears. Thus, humanity has no common history. No existing civilization can boast of representing the highest point of development in comparison with its predecessors.
The main civilizations include:
- western;
- Orthodox Christian in Russia;
- Iranian and Arabic (Islamic);
- Hindu;
- Far Eastern.
This also includes such ancient civilizations as the Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hellenic and Mayan civilizations. In addition, there are minor civilizations. Unlike earlier ones, the life of modern civilizations, according to Toynbee, is longer, they occupy vast territories, and the number of people covered by civilizations is, as a rule, large. They tend to spread through the subjugation and assimilation of other societies.
Theory of universal civilization
IN theories of world, universal civilization its individual stages (stages) are distinguished. Famous American scientists D. Bell, O. Toffler, Z. Brzezinski and others call three main stages in the global civilizational process:
- (agricultural);
- , which began with the first industrial revolution in Europe;
- (information society), which arises with the transformation of information technology into a determining factor in the development of society.
Character traits pre-industrial (agrarian) civilization:
- the predominance of agricultural production and natural exchange of products;
- the overwhelming role of the state in social processes;
- strict class division of society, low social mobility of citizens;
- the predominance of customs and traditions in the spiritual sphere of society.
Character traits industrial civilization:
- the predominance of industrial production with the increasing role of science in it;
- development ;
- high social mobility;
- the increasing role of individualism and the initiative of the individual in the struggle to weaken the role of the state, to increase the role of civil society in the political and spiritual sphere of society.
Post-industrial civilization(information society) has the following characteristics:
- automation of the production of consumer goods, development of the service sector;
- development of information technology and resource-saving technologies;
- development of legal regulation of social relations, the desire for harmonious relations between society, the state and the individual;
- the beginning of attempts to intelligently interact with the environment, to solve global diverse problems of humanity.
Formational approach to historical phenomena
Analysis from the perspective of the theory of global civilization is close to formational approach, formed within the framework of Marxism. Under formation is understood as a historically specific type of society that arises on the basis of a specific method of material production. Plays a leading role basis - a set of economic relations that develop between people in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods. The totality of political, legal, religious and other views, relations and institutions constitutes superstructure
Social consciousness
One of the elements of the superstructure is the totality of views of a given society on various aspects of the structure of the world and social life.
This set of views has a certain structure. Views are divided into two levels. First level consists of empirical (experienced) views of people on the world and their own lives, accumulated throughout the history of a given society, second- theoretical systems of ideas developed by professional researchers.
In addition, views are divided into groups depending on the area of \u200b\u200bthe issues being addressed. These groups of ideas are usually called. These forms include: knowledge about the world as a whole, about nature, about social life, legal knowledge, morality, religion, ideas about beauty, etc. These ideas at the theoretical level appear in the form of scientific disciplines: philosophy, political science, legal sciences, ethics, religious studies, aesthetics, physics, chemistry, etc. The state and development of social consciousness are determined by the state of social existence, i.e. the level of development of society and the nature of its economic basis.
Social revolution
The source of development of society is considered contradictions between productive forces and production relations, resolved during the social revolution.
According to this theory, humanity develops through a number of stages (formations), each of which differs in its basis and corresponding superstructure. Each formation is characterized by a certain basic form of ownership and a leading class that dominates both the economy and politics. The stages of primitive society, slave society and feudal society correspond to agrarian civilization. The capitalist formation corresponds to industrial civilization. The highest formation - communist - with its best principles of social structure from the point of view of Marxism, is built on the most developed economic basis.
The following are usually called disadvantages of the formational approach:
- predetermination, the rigid inevitability of the development of the historical process;
- exaggeration of the role of the economic factor in social life;
- underestimation of the role of spiritual and other superstructural factors.
Currently, formation theory is experiencing a crisis; the civilizational approach to the study of the historical process is becoming more widespread. The civilizational approach has a more specific historical nature, taking into account not only the material and technical aspects of social development, but also the influence of factors arising in other spheres of society.
Generally formational and civilizational approaches do not exclude, but complement and enrich each other.
In the social sciences, there have long been discussions on a fundamental question: is the world moving towards a single civilization with universal human values, or is the trend towards cultural and historical diversity being realized and humanity will be a collection of locally developing civilizations? Supporters of the first point of view refer to the indisputable facts of the spread of values that originated in European civilization: ideological pluralism, humanization, democracy, modern technology, etc. Supporters of the second position emphasize that the basis for the development of any viable organism, including a social one, is the interaction of opposite sides, variety. The spread of common values and cultural ways of life that are common to all peoples, and the globalization of the world community supposedly entail the end of human development.
Different theories provide the opportunity to see history differently. In formational and general civilization theories, the laws of development common to all humanity come to the fore; in the theory of local civilizations, the individual diversity of the historical process comes to the fore. Thus, different approaches have their own advantages and complement each other.
In order to develop an objective picture of the historical process, historical science must rely on a certain methodology, certain general principles that would make it possible to organize all the material accumulated by researchers and create effective explanatory models.
For a long time, historical science was dominated by subjectivist or objective-idealistic methodology. From the standpoint of subjectivism, the historical process was explained by the actions of great people: leaders, Caesars, kings, emperors and other major political figures. According to this approach, their clever calculations or, on the contrary, mistakes, led to one or another historical event, the totality and interconnection of which determined the course and outcome of the historical process.
The objective-idealistic concept assigned a decisive role in the historical process to the action of objective superhuman forces: Divine will, providence, the Absolute Idea, the World Will, etc. With this interpretation, the historical process acquired a purposeful character. Under the influence of these superhuman forces, society moved steadily towards a predetermined goal. Historical figures acted only as a means, an instrument in the hands of these superhuman, impersonal forces.
In accordance with the solution to the question of the driving forces of the historical process, history was also periodized. The most widespread periodization was according to the so-called historical eras: Ancient World, Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modern and Contemporary Times. In this periodization, the time factor was quite clearly expressed, but there were no meaningful qualitative criteria for identifying these eras.
In the middle of the 19th century, he tried to overcome the shortcomings of the methodology of historical research and put history, like other humanities disciplines, on a scientific basis. German thinker K. Marx. K. Marx formulated the concept of a materialist explanation of history, based on four basic principles:
1. The principle of the unity of humanity and therefore unity of the historical process.
2. The principle of historical regularity. Marx proceeds from the recognition of the action in the historical process of general, stable, recurring essential connections and relationships between people and the results of their activities.
3. The principle of determinism is the recognition of the existence of cause-and-effect relationships and dependencies. From all the variety of historical phenomena, Marx considered it necessary to highlight the main, defining ones. The main thing that determines the historical process, according to K. Marx, is the method of production of material goods.
4. The principle of progress. From the point of view of K. Marx, historical progress is this is the progressive development of society, rising to higher and higher levels.
The materialist explanation of history is based on formational approach. The concept of socio-economic formation in the teachings of Marx occupies a key place in explaining the driving forces of the historical process and the periodization of history. Marx proceeds from the following principle: if humanity naturally and progressively develops as a single whole, then all of it must go through certain stages in its development. He called these stages “socio-economic formations.” According to K. Marx’s definition, a socio-economic formation is “a society at a certain stage of historical development, a society with unique distinctive characteristics” (Marx K., Engels F. Soch. T. 6. - P. 442). Marx borrowed the concept of “formation” from contemporary natural science. This concept in geology, geography, and biology denotes certain structures connected by the unity of conditions of formation, similarity of composition, and interdependence of elements.
The basis of a socio-economic formation, according to Marx, is one or another mode of production, which is characterized by a certain level and nature of the development of productive forces and production relations corresponding to this level and nature. The main relations of production are property relations. The totality of production relations forms its basis, over which political, legal and other relations and institutions are built, which in turn correspond to certain forms of social consciousness: morality, religion, art, philosophy, science, etc. Thus, the socio-economic formation includes in its composition all the diversity of the life of society at one or another stage of its development.
From the point of view of the formational approach, humanity in its historical development goes through five main stages - formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist (socialism is the first phase of the communist formation).
The transition from one socio-economic formation to another is carried out on the basis social revolution. The economic basis of the social revolution is the deepening conflict between the productive forces of society, which have reached a new level and acquired a new character, and the outdated, conservative system of production relations. This conflict in the political sphere is manifested in the strengthening of social antagonisms and the intensification of class struggle between the ruling class, interested in preserving the existing system, and the oppressed classes, demanding an improvement in their situation.
Revolution leads to a change in the ruling class. The winning class carries out transformations in all spheres of social life and thus creates the prerequisites for the formation of a new system of socio-economic, legal and other social relations, a new consciousness, etc. This is how a new formation is formed. In this regard, in the Marxist concept of history, a significant role was given to class struggle and revolutions. The class struggle was declared the most important driving force of history, and K. Marx called revolutions “the locomotives of history.”
The materialist concept of history, based on a formational approach, has been dominant in the historical science of our country over the past 80 years. The strength of this concept is that, based on certain criteria, it creates a clear explanatory model of all historical development. The history of mankind appears as an objective, natural, progressive process. The driving forces of this process, the main stages, etc. are clear.
However, the formational approach to understanding and explaining history is not without its shortcomings. These shortcomings are pointed out by his critics in both foreign and domestic historiography. Firstly, the formational approach assumes unilinear nature of historical development. The theory of formations was formulated by K. Marx as a generalization of the historical path of Europe. And Marx himself saw that some countries do not fit into this pattern of alternating five formations. He attributed these countries to the so-called “Asian mode of production.” Based on this method, according to Marx, a special formation is formed. But he did not carry out a detailed development of this issue. Later, historical studies showed that in Europe, too, the development of certain countries (for example, Russia) cannot always be inserted into the pattern of changing five formations. Thus, the formational approach creates certain difficulties in reflecting the diversity of multivariance historical development.
Secondly, the formational approach is characterized by a strict connection of any historical phenomena to the method of production, the system of economic relations. The historical process is considered primarily from the point of view of the formation and change of the mode of production: the decisive role in explaining historical phenomena is given to objective, extrapersonal factors, and the main subject of history - man - is given a secondary role. Man appears in that theory only as. a cog in a powerful objective mechanism that drives historical development. In this way, the human, personal content of the historical process, and with it the spiritual factors of historical development, is belittled.
Thirdly, the formational approach absolutizes the role of conflict relations, including violence, in the historical process. The historical process in this methodology is described primarily through the prism of class struggle. Hence, along with economic processes, a significant role is assigned to political processes. Opponents of the formational approach point out that social conflicts, although they are a necessary attribute of social life, still do not play a decisive role in it. And this requires a reassessment of the place of political relations in history. They are important, but the decisive importance belongs to spiritual and moral life.
Fourthly, the formational approach contains elements providentialism and social utopianism. As noted above, the formational concept presupposes the inevitability of the development of the historical process from a classless primitive communal through class - slave, feudal and capitalist - to a classless communist formation. K. Marx and his disciples spent a lot of effort to prove the inevitability of the advent of the era of communism, in which everyone will contribute their wealth according to their abilities and receive from society according to their needs. In Christian terminology, the achievement of communism means the achievement by humanity of the kingdom of God on Earth. The utopian nature of this scheme was revealed in the last decades of the existence of Soviet power and the socialist system. The overwhelming majority of peoples abandoned the “building of communism.”
The methodology of the formational approach in modern historical science is to some extent opposed by the methodology civilizational approach. The civilizational approach to explaining the historical process began to take shape back in the 18th century. However, it received its most complete development only at the end of the 19th - 20th centuries. In foreign historiography, the most prominent adherents of this methodology are M. Weber, A. Toynbee, O. Spengler and a number of major modern historians united around the historical journal “Annals” (F. Braudel, J. Le Goff, etc.). In Russian historical science, his supporters were N. Ya. Danilevsky, K.N. Leontyev, P.A. Sorokin.
The main structural unit of the historical process, from the point of view of this approach, is civilization. The term "civilization" comes from the Latin. the words “civil” - urban, civil, state. Initially, the term “civilization” denoted a certain level of development of society that occurs in the life of peoples after an era of savagery and barbarism. “Civil” was contrasted with “silvaticus” - wild, forest, rough. The distinctive features of civilization, from the point of view of this interpretation, are the emergence of cities, writing, social stratification of society, and statehood.
In a broader sense, civilization is most often understood as a high level of cultural development of a society. Thus, during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, civilization was associated with the improvement of morals, laws, art, science, and philosophy. In this context, there are also opposing points of view, in which civilization is interpreted as the final moment in the development of the culture of a particular society, meaning its “decline” or decline (O. Spengler).
However, for a civilizational approach to the historical process, understanding civilization as an integral social system, including various elements (religion, culture, economic, political and social organization, etc.), which are consistent with each other and are closely interrelated. Each element of this system bears the stamp of the originality of a particular civilization. This uniqueness is very stable. And although certain changes occur in civilization under the influence of certain external and internal influences, their certain basis, their inner core remains unchanged. This approach to civilization is fixed in the theory of cultural-historical types of civilization by N. Ya. Danilevsky, A. Toynbee, O. Spengler and others. Cultural-historical types are historically established communities that occupy a certain territory and have their own characteristics characteristic only of them cultural and social development. N.Ya. Danilevsky counts 13 types or “original civilizations”, A. Toynbee - 6 types, O. Spengler - 8 types.
The civilizational approach has a number of strengths:
1) its principles are applicable to the history of any country or group of countries. This approach is focused on understanding the history of society, taking into account the specifics of countries and regions. Hence it follows versatility this methodology;
2) orientation towards taking into account specifics presupposes the idea of history as multilinear, multivariate process;
3) the civilizational approach does not reject, but, on the contrary, assumes integrity, unity of human history. Civilizations as integral systems are comparable to each other. This allows for widespread use comparative historical research method. As a result of this approach, the history of a country, people, region is considered not in itself, but in comparison with the history of other countries, peoples, regions, civilizations. This makes it possible to better understand historical processes and record their features;
4) highlighting certain criteria for the development of civilization allows historians assess the level of achievements of certain countries, peoples and regions, their contribution to the development of world civilization;
5) the civilizational approach assigns a proper role in the historical process human spiritual, moral and intellectual factors. In this approach, religion, culture, and mentality are important for characterizing and assessing civilization.
The weakness of the methodology of the civilizational approach lies in the amorphous nature of the criteria identifying types of civilization. This identification by supporters of this approach is carried out according to a set of characteristics, which, on the one hand, should be of a fairly general nature, and on the other, would allow us to identify specific features characteristic of many societies. In the theory of cultural-historical types by N. Ya. Danilevsky, civilizations are distinguished by a unique combination of four fundamental elements: religious, cultural, political and socio-economic. In some civilizations the pressure is economic, in others it is political, in others it is religious, in others it is cultural. Only in Russia, according to Danilevsky, is a harmonious combination of all these elements realized.
The theory of cultural-historical types by N. Ya. Danilevsky to some extent assumes the application of the principle of determinism in the form of dominance, the determining role of some elements of the civilization system. However, the nature of this dominance is difficult to discern.
Even greater difficulties in analyzing and assessing types of civilization arise for the researcher when the main element of a particular type of civilization is considered to be a type of mentality. Mentality, mentality(from the French mentalite’ - thinking, psychology) is a certain general spiritual mood of the people of a particular country or region, fundamental stable structures of consciousness, a set of socio-psychological attitudes and beliefs of the individual and society. These attitudes determine a person’s worldview, the nature of values and ideals, and form the subjective world of the individual. Guided by these guidelines, a person acts in all spheres of his life - he creates history. The intellectual, spiritual and moral structures of man undoubtedly play a vital role in history, but their indicators are difficult to discern and vague.
There are also a number of claims to the civilizational approach related to the interpretation of the driving forces of the historical process, the direction and meaning of historical development.
All this taken together allows us to conclude that both approaches - formational and civilizational - make it possible to consider the historical process from different angles. Each of these approaches has strengths and weaknesses, but if you try to avoid the extremes of each of them, and take the best that is available in a particular methodology, then historical science will only benefit.
topic 2 Origins and main types of civilization in ancient times
1/ Primitive history: prerequisites for the formation of civilizations
2/ Ancient Eastern civilization
3/ Western type of civilization: ancient civilization
Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome
Based on the subject of studying global development, modernization, and human progress, historians “lined” peoples along a hierarchical ladder with “advanced” (Slavs) and “backward” (Ugric-Finns, Cumans) peoples. The history of Russia is seen as the history of the Slavs.
Historians who adhere to a world-progressive approach consider the main driver of movements of peoples to be “the need for large expanses of land necessary for the then primitive management of the economy.”
World-progressive approach (from the point of view of progress). Within the walls of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the 18th century, the “Norman theory” was born, according to which the Kievan state was created by the Norman-Varangians. The founders of this theory were Bayer, a Koenigsberg linguist, and after him another German scientist, G. Miller.
Representatives of the world-progressive approach (XIX - early centuries centuries) N. M. Karamzin (1766-1826), S. M. Solovyov (1820-1879) characterized the period of fragmentation of Kievan Rus as a time of “dark, silent”, “meager affairs glory and the rich with insignificant feuds."
Representatives of the world-progressive approach of the 19th century N. M. Karamzin, S. M. Solovyov, V. O. Klyuchevsky, M. N. Pokrovsky and others rooted in the minds of the people the thesis that “the Mongol-Tatar yoke threw back Rus' in its development two hundred years ago."
Formation theory (K. Marx)
The subject and scope of application of formation theory is history as an objective result of their activities, independent of the consciousness and will of people.
Formational theory is primarily an ontological analysis of history, that is, the identification of deep, essential foundations.
Formational analysis is a “vertical” section of history. It reveals the movement of humanity from the original, simple (lower) stages or forms to increasingly complex and developed stages.
Formational theory is primarily a socio-economic cross-section of history. It takes as the starting point for comprehending history the method of material production as the main one, ultimately determining all other spheres of social life.
With the formational approach, the emphasis is on internal development factors; this process itself is revealed as self-development. For these purposes, an appropriate conceptual apparatus has been developed (contradictions in the method of production - between productive forces and production relations, in the social-class structure of society, etc.). The main attention is paid to the struggle of opposites, i.e. more to what separates people of a given social system (society), and less to what unites them.
Formation theory begins to comprehend society “from below,” that is, from the mode of production. It should be emphasized that the entire philosophy of history before Marx focused on the analysis of the sphere of politics, law, morality, religion, culture, less often natural, natural (mainly geographical) conditions, etc. Marx, in direct opposition to tradition (according to the law of negation), put forward material production comes first To analyze other spheres of social life in the full scope of their content and functioning, as they say, he did not have enough time or energy. At best, individual problems were analyzed (the interaction of the main spheres of social life, class relations and class struggle, the state as an instrument of political domination of the economically leading class, and some others)
In other words, society as a social organism was revealed from one point of view, namely from the point of view of the determining role of the mode of material production, which led to an underestimation of the importance and role of other spheres, especially culture. Such one-sidedness was, in our opinion, caused not so much by the essence or principles of the materialist understanding of history, but by the circumstances of the specific research situation in social knowledge of that time (underestimation of precisely this method). The followers of Marx further aggravated this one-sidedness.
It is no coincidence that the leading leitmotif of Engels’s last letters (“Letters on Historical Materialism”) to the young followers of Marxism is emphasizing (in addition to the determining role of production) the active role of the superstructure (politics, law, etc.), the moment of its independent development. But these were rather recommendations . For a comprehensive study of the same culture, morality, etc. Engels also no longer had the strength or time. It is worth noting such a specific phenomenon as the magic of a new word. The term “mode of production” (method of production of material life) fascinated with its novelty, high resolution of rational knowledge, as if illuminating the deep processes of life with an electric, contrasting, sharp light.
Formation theory, with all its shortcomings, is one of the first attempts to construct a global picture of human history on the basis of scientific rationality (a metatheory of the historical process). Its specific scientific aspects are largely outdated, but the approach itself that underlies it remains valid. It tries to systematically reveal the most general foundations and deep tendencies of the historical process and analyze it on this basis. general and special properties of specific historical societies. Due to the highly abstract nature of this theory, it is dangerous to apply it directly to a specific society, to squeeze individual societies into a Procrustean bed of formations. Between this meta-theory and the analysis of specific societies must lie middle-range theories.
Modernization theory is a theory designed to explain the process of modernization in societies. The theory examines the internal development factors of any given country, based on the assumption that “traditional” countries can be involved in development in the same way as more developed ones. Modernization theory attempts to identify the social variables that contribute to social progress and development of society and attempts to explain the process of social evolution. Although none of the scientists denies the process of modernization of society itself (the transition from traditional to industrial society), the theory itself has been subject to significant criticism both from Marxists and representatives of the free market idea, as well as from supporters of the dependence theory for the reason that it represents a simplified idea of historical process.
The approach in which history is viewed through a process of improvement, improvement, or renewal is called the “modernization approach.” In terms of historical significance, the modernization approach views history as a process of transition from a traditional society to a modern society, from an agricultural society to an industrial one. The main goal of the modernization approach is to study modernization.
Classic works describing modernization belong to O. Comte, G. Spencer, K. Marx, M. Weber, E. Durkheim and F. Tönnies.
In most classical concepts of modernization, the emphasis is on the formation of an industrial society; modernization is seen as a process that runs parallel to industrialization, as the transformation of a traditional agrarian society into an industrial one. It is considered from the point of view of transformation of the economic system, technical equipment and labor organization.
History as a science.
Formational and civilizational approaches to historical knowledge
Klyuchevsky (1841-1911) wrote about history like this:
ria as science: " In scientific language the word "history"
1) as movement in time, process and 2) as knowledge of the process. By-
Therefore, everything that happens in time has its own history. Consequently, the subject of the study of history is the activity and action
life of people, the whole set of relations in society
The basis of historical science– collecting, systematizing and summarizing
facts, considering them in close connection and totality. Thanks to gradual
the accumulation of facts has created entire branches of historical knowledge: civil
history, political history, history of state and law, economic history,
military history, archeology, history of culture, music, language, literature.
History is a concrete science, requiring precise knowledge of chronology
(dates) of facts, events. Compared to other humanities, the study
who want any one aspect of social life, it characterizes
due to the fact that the subject of its knowledge is the entire totality of the life of society
throughout the entire historical process.
History is one of the oldest sciences, it is about 2500 years old.. Its fundamental
Ancient Greek is considered a nickname historian Herodotus(V century BC), the first
wrote the book "History". The ancients valued history very much and called it
"magistga vitae" (teacher of life).
The structure of historical consciousness: 1. Lowest level (ordinary) creation
knowledge based on the accumulation of life experience; 2. Historical consciousness
formed under the influence of fiction, cinema, radio, television
denia, theater, painting, under the influence of acquaintance with historical monuments
kami; 3. Formed on the basis of historical knowledge itself, acquired
us in history lessons at school.
At the most diverse stages of their development, tribes, peoples, nations sought to preserve the memory of their past in a variety of forms: from oral traditions
when there was no writing yet, before all kinds of written narratives, works of art, scientific works, monuments of fine art. This contributed to the self-affirmation of this community of people as a people.
Formational and civilizational approaches to historical knowledge.
In order to develop an objective picture of the historical process
process, historical science must rely on a certain methodology.
The most widespread periodization was according to the so-called historical eras: the Ancient World, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, New and Contemporary times. In this periodization, the time factor is quite clearly expressed, but there were no meaningful qualitative criteria for identifying these eras.
I tried to overcome the shortcomings of the methodology of historical research and put history on a scientific basis. in the middle of the 19th century. German
thinker K. Marx. K. Marx formulated the concept of materialism
checheskogo explanation of history based on four basic principles:
1. The principle of the unity of humanity and, consequently, the unity of historical
sky process.
2. The principle of historical regularity. Marx starts from recognition
actions in the historical process of general, stable, repeating beings
connections and relationships between people and the results of their activities.
3. The principle of determinism – recognition of the existence of causality
investigative connections and dependencies. According to K. Marx, the main thing is the method of production of material goods.
4. The principle of progress.
The materialist explanation of history is based on formational
approach. According to K. Marx’s definition, social
economic formation is a “society in op-
a certain stage of historical development.
Humanity in its historical development passes five main
stages – formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal,
capitalist and communist (socialism is the first phase of commun-
stical formation).The transition from one socio-economic formation to another is carried out on the basis of a social revolution.
Revolution leads to a change in the ruling class. The winner
the class carries out transformations in all spheres of social life and
In this way, the prerequisites are created for the formation of a new system of social
economic, legal and other social relations, new
consciousness, etc. This is how a new formation is formed.
The class struggle was declared the most important driving force of history,
and K. Marx called revolutions “the locomotives of history.”
formational approach: The strength of this concept is: a clear explanatory model of all historical development. The history of mankind appears as an objective, natural, progressive process. The driving forces are clear
this process, the main stages, etc.
Disadvantages:1) the formational approach assumes one-line
linear nature of historical development, but not all countries fit into a regular pattern (for example, Russia) 2) characterized by a rigid binding
former historical phenomena to the method of production, and man plays a secondary role. 3) the role of conflict relations, including violence, in the historical process, class struggle. 4) contains elements of providentialism and social utopianism, assumes the inevitability of the development of the historical process from
classless primitive community through class - slaveholding,
feudal and capitalist - to a classless communist form-
tions. Example: the last 10 years of the existence of Soviet power and the socialist system, most peoples abandoned the “building of communism.”
Civilizational approach began to take shape back in the 18th century. it received full development only at the end of the 19th-20th centuries. The most striking features
The adherents of that methodology are M. Weber, A. Toynbee, O. Spengler, in Russia: N.Ya. Danilevsky, K.N. Leontyev, P.A. Sorokin.
The basis of this approach is civilization. Initially
but the term “civilization” denoted a certain level of development of society
tsva, coming in the life of peoples after an era of savagery and barbarism. Otli-
significant signs of civilization are the emergence of cities, writing, social stratification of society, and statehood.
In broader terms, civilization means a high level
development of the culture of society.
The civilizational approach has a number of strengths:
1) its principles apply to the history of any country or group of countries.
This approach is focused on understanding the history of society, taking into account the specifics
countries and regions. 2) orientation towards taking into account specifics presupposes the idea of history as a multilinear, multivariate process;
3) The civilizational approach does not reject, but, on the contrary, presupposes a
integrity, unity of human history. Civilizations as integral systems
The topics are comparable to each other. This makes it possible to widely use comparative
historical-historical research method;
4) highlighting certain criteria for the development of civilization allows
historians to evaluate the level of achievements of certain countries, peoples and regional
new, their contribution to the development of world civilization;
5) assigns a proper role in history. process to human spiritual, moral and intellectual factors. In this approach, religion, culture, and mentality are important for assessing civilization.
Weakness of the approach: consists in the amorphous nature of the criteria for identifying types of civilization.
In the theory of cultural-historical types by N. Ya. Danilevsky, civilizations vary
are a peculiar combination of four elements: religious, cultural, political and socio-economic. Aquatic civilizations are driven by the economic principle, in others - by the political, and in others - by the religious, in the fourth - by the cultural. Only in Russia, according to Danilevsky, is a harmonious combination of all these elements realized.