The theory of conflict in Marxist philosophy. Marx on conflict
Another harbinger of a true union between Marxism and sociological theory was the development of conflict theory as an alternative to structural functionalism. As we said before structural functionalism, having achieved leadership in sociological theory, began to be subjected to increasing criticism. Criticism was multilateral; Structural functionalism has been accused of being politically conservative, failing to effect social change because structural functionalism puts static structures at the forefront, and failing to adequately analyze social conflict.
One result of this critique has been an attempt on the part of a number of sociologists to overcome the problems of structural functionalism by combining an interest in structure with an interest in conflict. This work initiated the development conflict theory as an alternative to the structural-functional theory. Unfortunately, this theory has often turned out to be little more than a mirror image of structural functionalism, with little intellectual integrity inherent in it.
The first mention in theory was a book by Lewis Coser (Coser, 1956) on the functions of social conflict (Jworski, 1991). In this work, an attempt was made to study social conflict from the point of view of the structural-functional worldview. While it is useful to consider the functions of conflict, there is much more to be learned by studying conflict itself than by analyzing its positive functions.
Others have tried to bridge the gap between structural functionalism and conflict theory (Coleman 1971; Himes 1966; vandenBerghe 1963). Although these attempts had some practical value, the authors were accused of trying to
Charles Wright Mills was born August 28, 1916 in Uzko, Texas. He came from a classical middle class family; his father was an insurance broker and his mother a housewife. He attended the University of Texas and by 1939 received both his bachelor's and master's degrees. Mills was a rather unusual student, by the time of graduation he already had published articles in two of the most prestigious sociological journals. Mills wrote his doctoral dissertation and received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin (Scimecca, 1977). His first place of work was the University of Maryland, but most his career, from 1945 until his death, he spent at Columbia University.
Mills was a man in a hurry to get things done (Horowitz, 1983). By the time of his death at the age of 45 from a fourth heart attack, he had brought a lot of important things to sociology.
One of Mills' most notable traits is his belligerence. He seemed to be constantly at war. He had a turbulent personal life with many connections, three marriages and children from each marriage. His professional life was just as turbulent. He seemed to fight with everyone and everything. As a graduate student in Wisconsin, he attacked his professors. Later, in one of his early essays, a thinly concealed critique of the former head of the Wisconsin chapter appeared. He called the chief theorist in Wisconsin, Howard Becker, "an outright fool" (Horowitz, 1983). Finally, he had a conflict with his co-author, Hans Tert, who called Mills "a great businessman, an insolent boy, a promising young man, striving for profit, and a Texas cowboy with a gun and a horse" (Horowitz, 1983, p. 72). As a professor at Columbia University, Mills was alienated from his colleagues. One of them said:
There was no estrangement between Wright and me. We were aloof at first. Indeed, at the memorial services or the meeting organized at Columbia University after his death, I seemed to be the only one who could not say: "I was his friend, but we grew a little apart." It was rather the other way around (cited in Horowitz, 1983, p. 83).
Mills was an outsider and he knew it: “I am an outsider, not only geographically, but in essence, and this forever” (Horowitz, 1983, p. 84). In The Sociological Imagination, Mills (1959) challenged not only the sociological authority of his time, Talcott Parsons, but also the methodological authority of Paul Lazarsfeld, also a former Columbia University colleague.
Mills didn't just get along with people; he was not in better relations with American society as a whole and criticized it on various positions. But perhaps most revealing was Mills' visit to Soviet Union when he was honored as a major critic American society, and he took the opportunity to attack Soviet censorship and proclaimed a toast to one of the most prominent Soviet figures early years, who suffered from the purges and was killed by the Stalinists: “For the day when complete collection writings of Leon Trotsky will be published in the Soviet Union!” (Tilman, 1984, p. 8).
not to "mask" the main differences between these two theoretical alternatives (A. Frank, 1966/1974).
The biggest problem with the theory of conflict was its isolation from the theory of Marx, on the ideas of which it could rely. After all, Marxist theory was created and developed outside of sociology and could provide the basis
on which to develop a complex sociological theory of conflict. The exception was the work of Ralf Dahrendorf (b. 1929).
Dahrendorf is a European scientist who is well acquainted with Marx's theory. He tried to present his theory of conflict in the Marxist tradition: Ultimately, his theory of conflict looked more like a mirror image of structural functionalism than a Marxist theory of conflict. Dahrendorf's major work, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Dahrendorf, 1959), is the most influential work on conflict theory, but this was only possible because it was seen more as a work on structural functionalism, which was acceptable to leading sociologists. This means that Dahrendorf acted on the same level of analysis as the structural functionalists (structures and institutions) and dealt with the same issues. (In other words, structural functionalism and conflict theory appear to be parts of the same paradigm; see Appendix.) Dahrendorf recognized that while aspects of a social system may correspond quite clearly, there can also be serious conflict and tension between them.
After all, conflict theory should be regarded as nothing more than a transitional period in the history of sociological theory. It failed because it did not go far enough in the direction of Marxist theory. American Sociology in the 1950s and 1960s was not ready to accept a fully formed Marxist approach. But conflict theory helped chart the way to adopt this approach in the late 1960s.
We should note the contribution to conflict theory by Randall Collins (Collins, 1975, 1990, 1993). On the one hand, Collins's work had the same shortcomings as other work in the tradition of conflict theory: from the point of view of Marxist theory, it lacked scientific content. On the other hand, Collins identified another weakness of conflict theory and attempted to overcome it. The problem is that conflict theory focuses primarily on the social structures actors, as well as their thoughts and actions, little or nothing is said. Collins, who adhered to the phenomenological-ethnomethodological traditions, tried to develop the theory of conflict in this direction.
A highly detailed concept of social conflict has been proposed by the economist and sociologist Karl Marx(1818-1883). According to Marx, conflicts are inherent in all levels of social life: politics, economics, culture. The whole history of hitherto existing societies has been the history of class struggles. Its main reason was the dominance of private property, on which all the so-called "antagonistic socio-economic formations" are based. In a communist society based on public property, antagonistic contradictions and conflicts will disappear. Thus, the prehistory of mankind will be ended and its true history will begin.
followers of Marx in Russia, V. I. Lenin and others believed that acute social contradictions would disappear already under socialism, in the first, lower phase of communism. In Soviet philosophy, this position was recognized as indisputable, it was proclaimed that “with the construction of developed socialism, the development of non-antagonistic contradictions into antagonistic ones becomes objectively impossible.”
However, the achievement of this ideal was associated in Marxism with the use of mass violence in the form of an irreconcilable struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, a socialist revolution, an armed uprising, civil war and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Therefore, it is this form of social conflict that Marxism has developed in the most detail. Following the teachings of Marx, Lenin and his associates created a detailed doctrine of driving forces socialist revolution, the art of preparing and carrying out an armed uprising, methods of implementing the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to eliminate the ruling elite, headed by the royal family, as well as the nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie, kulaks, various “enemies of the people”, “dissidents”, etc. Revolutionary violence was for Marx and his followers the main method of resolving social conflicts, and reforms and compromises were only its by-product.
In its subsequent development, the theory of conflict constantly relies on the initial ideas about the nature of the conflict, expressed by prominent thinkers of antiquity, the Middle Ages and the New Age. Thus, modern conflictology, using these ideas of classical philosophy, adheres in one way or another to two basic concepts of human nature.
Some scientists, guided by the ideas of Rousseau. Marx, argue that man is a rational being, and outbursts of aggression and cruelty arise as a forced reaction to life circumstances. In their opinion, the human consciousness and psyche are formed in vivo under the influence of specific social conditions. They believe that reform and improvement social institutions will inevitably lead to the destruction of conflicts and wars.
Others affirm the original irrational nature of man, for whom violence and aggression are natural and natural. Following the principles of T. Hobbes, developed in the works F. Nietzsche(1844-1900) and 3. Freud(1856-1939), supporters of this concept consider aggressive manifestations in human behavior as a pathology and a deviation in his nature, but as a natural state dictated by his nature. In their opinion, this is precisely why, striving for eternal and final peace, humanity inevitably returns to war.
However, despite the fruitfulness of the ideas about the nature of the conflict, expressed by classical philosophy, in the study of the essence of the conflict until the end of the XIX century. there were significant shortcomings:
- conflicts were considered only in the general plan, in connection with the philosophical categories of contradictions and struggle, good and evil, as a universal property of not only social, but also natural being;
- the specifics of social conflicts as a whole was not studied, only a description was given certain types social conflicts: in the economy, politics, culture, psyche;
- predominantly only conflicts of the macro-level, between classes, nations, states, were studied, and conflicts in small groups, intrapersonal conflicts remained outside the field of view of scientists;
- the general features of conflict as a phenomenon of social life were not studied, and therefore there was no independent theory of conflict, and, consequently, conflictology as a science
As an independent discipline, conflictology developed only by the middle of the 20th century, having separated from two fundamental sciences: sociology and psychology.
- 85.50 KbFederal Agency for Education
State educational institution
higher professional education
"Vladimir State University"
Department of Sociology
Abstract on the discipline of sociology on the topic:
"Sociological theories of conflict
(K. Marx, G. Simmel, R. Dahrendorf)"
Performed:
Student group EUT-108
Tarasova K.I.
Checked:
Bannova T.A.
G. Vladimir
2009
Content
- Introduction 3
- Sociological theories of conflict 5
2.1 Karl Marx.
Dialectical doctrine of contradiction and conflict 5
2.2 "Conflict Functionalism" by Georg Simmel 7
2.3 Ralf Dahrendorf.
Model of dialectical conflict and its consequences 9
- Conclusion 14
- Bibliography 15
I Introduction
Conflicts are one of the most important phenomena of modern social and political life. Everyone is well aware that the life of a person in society is complex and full of contradictions, which often lead to a clash of interests as individual people, both large and small social groups.
Conflict (from Latin "confluctus") means a clash of parties, opinions, forces.
The history of human civilization is full of various kinds of conflicts. Some conflicts covered entire continents and dozens of countries and peoples, others involved large and small social communities, and others took place between individuals. Since ancient times, people have been trying to resolve emerging contradictions and dream of a conflict-free society. The emerging statehood can also be seen as a desire to create a universal mechanism for preventing and resolving conflicts. The ancient laws of the cruel king Hammurabi (1792 - 1750 BC) contain dozens of ways to resolve conflict situations. According to legend, King Solomon (965 - 928 BC) became famous for his wisdom and ability to avoid and resolve conflicts.
For centuries, the best minds of mankind have created theoretical models of a conflict-free society, and sometimes tried to translate them into real life.
Unfortunately, everything ended in failure and gave rise to even more violent conflicts.
Today, conflicts are a daily reality. Perhaps the 21st century will put mankind before an alternative: either it will become a century of conflict, or it will be the last century in the history of civilization. Conflicts in the 20th century became the main cause of death. Two world wars, local military conflicts, terror of totalitarian regimes, armed struggle for power, murders, suicides, disagreements, contradictions between individuals - all these types of conflicts, according to the most approximate estimate, claimed up to 300 million human lives in the last century. Slow but unstoppable improvement in weapons of mass destruction, test nuclear weapons testify to the growing danger of war with the use of these weapons. Domestic political struggle is one of the decisive factors in the development of most states. Conflicts in organizations often have a decisive influence on the quality of their activities. Harmony in the family and with oneself is the most important condition for a happy life for every person.
All this speaks of the decisive role of conflicts in the life of an individual, family, organization, state, society and humanity as a whole. At the end of the 20th century Russia, most likely, is the undisputed and unattainable world leader not only in terms of human losses in conflicts, but also in terms of their other devastating consequences: material and moral. The end of the century confronted Russia with an alternative: either the authorities and the people will be able, if not to govern, then at least to keep social conflicts within some regulated framework, or conflicts will govern the people and the authorities, dictating “meaningless and merciless” scenarios in the history of everyone and everyone’s biography. Our ignorance of the laws of the emergence, development and resolution of conflicts over the past decade alone has been paid for by the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, the ruined fates of tens of millions of people, the collapse of a largely imperfect, but still great power.
To effectively solve emerging problems, each person needs to acquire the necessary level of theoretical knowledge and practical skills of behavior in conflict situations, as well as knowledge about the causes and methods of conflict resolution.
In historical and fiction literature, it is described great amount differing in strength, in consequences for people, in the form and content of conflict situations. Experts estimate that over the past 5 thousand years, humanity has participated in approximately 15 thousand local and general wars - one of the most terrible forms of resolving social contradictions. From this fact, no matter how we treat it, it follows that the entire history of civilization is permeated with social conflicts, the solution of which often becomes impossible without the use of forceful methods and techniques, which, of course, causes irreparable damage to all areas of life and activity of peoples. It should be noted that most often even the most serious conflict situations arise and “expand” from the smallest and seemingly primitive situations, reasons, causes, and therefore consideration of the very essence of the conflict, analysis of all its components, as well as ways to resolve it is the most important subject of social psychology as a science.
II. Sociological theories of conflict
2.1. Karl Marx. Dialectical Doctrine of Contradiction and Conflict
Significant contribution to general theory The conflict was introduced by Karl Marx, having developed the doctrine of contradiction and developing a model of revolutionary class conflict and social change.
American sociologist J. Turner, who considered Marx one of the creators of the theory of conflict, based on the study of the works of Marx, formulated the following main provisions of the Marxist doctrine of conflict:
1. Despite the fact that social relations exhibit the properties of the system, they still contain a large number of conflicting interests;
2. This circumstance indicates that the social system systematically generates conflicts;
3. Consequently, conflict is an inevitable and very common feature of social systems;
four . Such conflicts tend to manifest themselves in polar opposites of interests;
5. Conflicts most often occur due to lack of resources, especially power;
6. Conflict is the main source of changes in social systems;
7. Any conflict is antagonistic. Further, for the purpose of systematization and clarity, Turner reduced the main provisions of Marx's doctrine of contradiction and conflict into a kind of table. Table (fragment)
Key theses of Marx
1. The more unevenly scarce resources are distributed in the system, the deeper the conflict of interests between the dominant and subordinate segments (social groups) of the system.
2. The more subordinate groups become aware of their interests, the more likely they will question the legitimacy and fairness of the current form of distribution of scarce resources.
3. The more the subordinate groups of the system are aware of their interests, the more they doubt the legitimacy of the distribution of scarce resources, the more likely they will have to come into common conflict with the dominant groups of the system.
4. The stronger the polarization of dominators and subordinates, the more violent the conflict will be.
5. The more violent the conflict, the more structural changes in the system and redistribution of missing resources.
These key theses of Marx in the interpretation of Turner explain the causes and factors of the conflict, their influence on the development of the conflict.
Marx developed the theory of social conflict in society. But the above theses are also applicable to the theory of conflict of a social group of a lower level - the organization of a labor group. So, according to the named provisions, conflict is an inevitable and widespread feature of the development of an organization.
One of the main causes of organizational conflict is the lack of resources and, in particular, power, as well as the uneven and unfair distribution of these resources.
Confirmation of the correctness of the interpretations of the teachings of Marx in relation to the organization can be found in modern research conflict and descriptions of practical experience of conflict situations.
2.2. "Conflict Functionalism" by Georg Simmel
Similarly, you can shift the theories of other classics of conflictology to the conditions of the organization (independently describe the other three theories for the enterprise).
"Conflict functionalism" by Georg Simmel, most scientists refer to the founders of theoretical conflictology. He believed that conflict in society is inevitable and unavoidable. K. Marx presented the social structure of society in the form of "dominant and subordinate strata", and the conflict, in his opinion, grows in the "dominance-subordination" system and always leads to destruction or social changes. But Simmel presented the social structure of society in the form of inextricably interrelated processes of association and dissociation of its elements, conflict is a natural component of these processes, and since conflict is inherent in both dissociation and association, it does not necessarily lead to the destruction of the system or social changes.
Simmel notes the positive consequences of conflicts: the preservation and strengthening of the social system as an integrity, the cohesion and unification of the social organism.
As sources of conflict, Simmel calls not only a clash of interests, but also the manifestation of people, so-called by him, "instincts of hostility." The instinct of hostility can increase the intensity of the conflict. It is possible to soften the conflict thanks to the harmony of relations between people and the instinct of love.
That. Simmel identifies peculiar factors that influence the nature of the course of the conflict - the instincts of love and hate.
Simmel views conflict as a variable variable that exhibits varying degrees of intensity or strength. extreme points intensity scales are competition and struggle. Simmel defined wrestling as a chaotic direct battle of the parties. Competition is a more ordered mutual struggle of the parties, leading to their mutual isolation.
Unlike Marx, who believed that conflict eventually intensifies, acquires a revolutionary character and leads to structural changes in the system, Simmel more often analyzed less intense and sharp conflicts that strengthen the strength and integration of the social system. However, Simmel made several judgments about the severity and strength of the conflict. These judgments were formalized and tabulated by Turner.
Simmel's key points regarding the severity of conflicts:
1. The more groups are involved in the conflict emotionally, the more acute the conflict.
2. The better "grouped" the groups involved in the conflict, the sharper it is.
3 . The higher the relative cohesion of the groups involved in the conflict, the more acute the conflict.
4. The stronger the consent of the parties involved in the conflict, the sharper the conflict.
5. The less isolated and exacerbated the conflicting groups are due to the broad social structure, the more acute the conflict.
6. The more the conflict becomes an end in itself, the more acute it is.
7. The more, according to its participants, the conflict goes beyond the limits of individual goals and interests, the sharper it is.
It follows from the statements that stronger emotions caused by conflict are more likely to lead to the use of violence. In interpersonal conflicts, feelings caused by former intimacy, enmity, or jealousy will increase the severity of the conflict. In intergroup conflicts, the internal cohesion of groups, the internal harmony of the relations of the groups involved in the conflict, is more likely to cause violence.
Work description
Conflicts are one of the most important phenomena of modern social and political life. Everyone is well aware that the life of a person in society is complex and full of contradictions, which often lead to a clash of interests of both individuals and large and small social groups.
Conflict (from Latin "confluctus") means a clash of parties, opinions, forces.
ASTRAKHAN STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
COURSE WORK
MARXISM AS A THEORY OF SOCIAL CONFLICT
Completed by: Solntsev M. G.
3rd year student,
group STs 31, OZO
Checked:
Astrakhan 2006
Introduction
2.1. social static
2.2. social dynamics
Conclusion
Literature
INTRODUCTION
In the history of modern European socio-economic thought, the Marxist school of sociology represents an unusual, extraordinary phenomenon. Using best achievements classical socio-philosophical thought and French enlightenment philosophy, French and English utopian socialism, German classical philosophy and English political economy, Marxism at the same time broke sharply with all intellectual traditions, offering its own, leftist, social restructuring project. And Rousseau both Fourier and Smith and Hegel were exclusively reformists, i.e. e. supporters of a peaceful solution to economic problems and labor conflicts. And this, undoubtedly, was reflected in the nature of their teaching.
The purpose of this work is to consider this theory from the historical point of view of the formational approach.
1. The concept and methodology of the issue
Marx's theory is based on the formational approach, which is the cornerstone of the Marxist historical science and explores society in statics and dynamics, reveals its internal logic, as well as the laws of its development and functioning. It involves consideration of all areas public life, but the core of the socio-economic formation is the method of production of material goods in the unity of the productive forces and production relations. Formation theory is based on the idea that history is interpreted as a single process of progressive development from the lowest to the highest. For its time, formational theory was a significant step forward, for for the first time it gave a clear, universal scheme of the world- historical process based on a materialistic understanding of history.
Thus, the theoretical teaching of Karl Marx, who put forward and substantiated the formational concept of society, takes special place in the context of sociological thought. One of the first in the history of sociology, Marx develops a detailed idea of society as a system. This idea is embodied, first of all, in his concept of socio-economic formation.
Socio-economic formation (from lat. formatio - formation, view) is a historical type of society, characterized by a certain state of productive forces, production relations and superstructural forms determined by them. "The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general".
The interaction and change of economic formations were considered by Marx in the application to pre-capitalist formations in a separate working material, which lay aside from the study of Western capitalism.
Formation means a complex of elements that are closely related to each other both vertically, age-wise, and horizontally, spatial relation. In other words, they are united into one whole by the common conditions of education. A similar picture is observed in the community of people who are united into a single class, social stratum or group of interests by a common social origin (all come from the proletariat or the middle class), a general level of education, skin color, nationality, common place of residence, etc. However, a common origin is not yet the main sign of formation, if we understand this extremely interesting and important term for sociology - stratification. It denotes a sequence of vertically arranged homogeneous layers. The layer cake is a model for the formation of a social pyramid. Social stratum - the totality of all people with the same or very similar income, level of education, amount of power and prestige. As you can see, the two terms - formation and stratification - are very close. However, there is a major difference between them. The term formation is broader. When describing a society, in addition to one degree of freedom of vertical ranking, the second fundamental norm is the system. Here it is the desired term - the system, in this case, the social system.
A fundamentally important moment for sociology - to trace historical patterns in the change of types of a social system - this was what K. Marx tried to discover in his studies. Thanks to the materialistic understanding of history, the sociological doctrine, created by him in collaboration with F. Engels, Marx managed to reveal the universal, natural, necessary in the evolution of society. As a result, the formation is a developing social-production organism, which has special laws of emergence, functioning, development and transformation into another, more complex social organism. Each of them has special way production, its own type of production relations, the special nature of the social organization of labor (and in antagonistic formations, special classes and forms of exploitation), historically determined, stable forms of community of people and relations between them, specific forms of public administration, special forms organization of the family and family relations, a special ideology and a set of spiritual values.
The use of the term "organism" indicates that Marx had a positive attitude towards biological analogies, trying to clarify (but not argue) his theory with their help. The borrowing of the biological term organism strengthened the cognitive possibilities of the Marxist theory of society. Thanks to him, society could already be comprehended as a social system.
In theoretical and methodological terms, it should be noted that the concept of social formation in Marx is an abstract construction, which can be referred to as an ideal type. In this regard, M. Weber quite rightly considered Marxist categories, including the category of social formation, "mental constructions".
Creating a conceptual construction, Marx realized that reality must diverge from its own image. History does not know "pure" formations. As you know, many sociologists, studying society, compared it with an organism. But none of them tried to combine two completely heterogeneous terms - a geological formation and a biological organism. Apparently, they instinctively felt some kind of internal inconsistency in such a mixture. It actually exists, and Marx's desire to connect the unconnected ultimately did not work in his favor.
In the formational theory of K. Marx, two components can be distinguished - statics and dynamics.
2.1. social static
Social statics describes what the social formation consists of, what is included in the mode of production, the economic basis and the ideological superstructure, and social dynamics reveals the mechanism for changing the modes of production (social formations) in a peaceful or revolutionary way.
First you need to define the socio-economic formation:
Socio-economic formation - a society that is at a certain stage of historical development. The formation is based known way production, which is the unity of the basis (economy) and superstructure (politics, ideology, science, etc.). The history of mankind looks like a sequence of five formations following one after another: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist formations.
According to the social statics of K. Marx, the basis of society is entirely economic. It represents the dialectical unity of productive forces and production relations. The superstructure includes: ideology, culture, art, education, science, politics, religion, the family of “remaining minus production”, and contains a wide variety of institutions, such as the state, law, family, religion, science, art, etc.
Marxism proceeds from the assertion that the nature of the superstructure is determined by the nature of the basis. This means that economic relations to a large extent determine the superstructure towering above them, that is, the totality of the political, moral, legal, artistic, philosophical, religious views of society and the relations and institutions corresponding to these views. As the nature of the base changes, so too does the nature of the superstructure.
The relationship between the base and the superstructure unfolds as follows. The basis has absolute autonomy and independence from the superstructure. The superstructure in relation to the basis has only relative autonomy.
It follows from this that, first of all, the economy, partly politics, has a true reality. That is, it is real from the point of view of influencing the social formation only in the second place. As far as ideology is concerned, it is already, as it were, third place real. It is more important than art, but less valuable than economics or politics. And Marx recalled religion only with a minus sign.
This is how an invisible (because Marx obviously did not prescribe this moment anywhere) hierarchy of the importance of the subsystems of society is built up.
There is a pragmatic (stated, however, very schematically) hierarchy of the subsystems of society. Science is in the background here. She is more
degree is focused on party interests and the proletarian revolution. However, there is a hierarchy.
The above scale does not indicate a place for family, education, and religion. The reason is the lack of clear explanations from the author of "Capital". Where the classes are located is not clear, since Marx did not have time to complete chapter 54 of Capital, devoted to them.
Under the productive forces, Marx understood: 1) people engaged in the manufacture of goods and the provision of services, with a certain qualification and ability to work; 2) land, subsoil and minerals; 3) buildings and premises where the production process is carried out; 4) tools of labor and production from a hand hammer to high-precision machine tools; 5) technology and equipment; 6) end products and raw materials. All of them are divided into two categories - personal and material factors of production.
Production relations - relations between people that develop in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods under the influence of the nature and level of development of the productive forces. They arise between large groups of people employed in social production. People enter into such relationships not as individuals, but as performers of predetermined socio-economic roles: employer and worker, landowner and peasant, borrower and creditor, tenant and landowner. The relations of ownership are the foundation of production relations.
The relations of production that form the economic structure of society determine the behavior and actions of people, both peaceful coexistence and conflicts between classes, the emergence of social movements and revolutions.
The productive forces form, expressed modern language, socio-technical system of production, and production relations - socio-economic. They play the most mobile, active, determining role in the development of society. In relation to society and the production relations prevailing in them at that moment in time, they perform the same function that they perform natural conditions in the development of biological organisms. They are the one external environment for production relations, the change of which leads either to their modification (partial change) or to complete destruction (replacement of old ones by new ones, which is always accompanied by a social revolution).
Marx also calls production relations a form of communication. This term does not apply to the productive forces. Indeed, neither buildings and machines, nor living people, workers or engineers, can be called a form of communication. True, Marx understands communication in a peculiar way. This is not a communicative process, not a conversation between two neighbors, but a way, mode or type of socio-economic relations. If the worker is forced to enter the labor market and sell his labor power, bargaining for a higher price, then he enters into a communication-relationship. Rent and exchange are relations of production and at the same time a form of communication between their subjects.
In Capital, Marx proves that the relations of production are determined, in the final analysis, by the level and nature of the development of the productive forces, while how much and how the possibilities hidden in the productive forces are used depends on the relations of production. The productive forces influence and determine the development of production relations, and together they determine the nature, direction and dynamics of the development of all institutions of the superstructure. If the basis is material, then the superstructure is the spiritual basis of society. The concept of "productive forces" was first introduced into science by the classics of English political economy, who used it to characterize the combination of labor power and tools.
Marx did not limit himself to the economic understanding of the productive forces, including here the diversity of abilities, qualifications and professional experience of a person. In accordance with this, the idea of production relations was also expanded, which he distinguished from those relations between workers that develop as a result of the technical, technological and professional division of labor. He took one more step in comparison with A. Smith. Marx added a third component: who gets what, who owns what, who appropriates what. In other words, the property relations that underlie the relations of production ... .
Based on the foregoing, a socio-economic formation is a set of all countries on the planet that are currently at the same stage of historical development, have similar mechanisms, institutions and institutions that determine the basis and superstructure of society. This thesis is especially important to emphasize. There are statements in the literature that the concept of "social formation" means not only a historically defined stage of development human society, but also the historical type of a separate, specific society, in other words - society. This is not true. As applied to individual countries this concept can only be used as a classification term that determines its belonging to one or another formation, to one or another ideal type.
At the same time, countries belonging to the primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and socialist systems can coexist on Earth. Such a historical gap was the second half of the 20th century. Even at the beginning of the XXI century. China and Cuba declared their socialist affiliation. Therefore, the criterion of multiformation also applies to this period. Modern Western societies, being predominantly capitalist, are in fact mixed economies that include elements not only of the capitalist, but also of the socialist economic system.
Marx wrote that the ancient community-city (polis) developed towards the slave system, but at the same time the German rural community immediately developed towards the feudal system. Thus, the feudal system was not at all a formation that grew out of ancient slavery. These were two formations that existed in parallel in Europe, emerging from the primitive communal system in conditions of different population densities among the Greeks and Germans.
Thus, the formational heterogeneity of social evolution is created by two factors. The first is the progressive ascent of mankind from one formation to another, from less developed to more complex and advanced, from primitive to capitalist and socialist. The second factor is the possibility of simultaneous coexistence on the same planet of countries with different formational patterns. He suggests that: a) humanity moves at different speeds; b) the old is not destroyed, but preserved.
According to the formational theory of Marx, in each historical period, if you make a momentary portrait of humanity, a variety of formations coexist on the planet - one in its classical form. Others - in their surviving form (transitional societies, where the remnants of various formations have accumulated).
2.2. social dynamics
Each formation constitutes a step in the progress of mankind from primitive society through antagonistic class formations to communism. Marx singled out five formations representing progressive stages in the development of human society: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist and communist, the first phase of which is socialism. But not all of them are equally valuable for the fate of mankind. Three formations - slaveholding, feudal and capitalist - are based on private property and are antagonistic. They can in no way act as a humanistic model of the human future. The first formation - tribal - although it recognizes collective property and excludes antagonism, is also not capable of serving as a guide, it is too primitive. Three antagonistic formations represent, according to Marx, not history, but only the prehistory of mankind. "... The prehistory of human society is completed with the bourgeois social formation."
Marx's materialistic theory of history is because the determining role in the development of society belongs not to the consciousness, but to the being of people. Being determines the consciousness, relationships of people, their behavior and views. Social production is the foundation of social life. It represents both the process and the result of the interaction of production forces (tools and people) and production relations. The totality of production relations that do not depend on the consciousness of people constitutes the economic structure of society. It's called the basis. Above the base rises a legal and political superstructure. This includes various forms of social consciousness, including religion and science. The base is primary and the superstructure is secondary.
According to Marx, society does not stand still: it is constantly evolving, ascending from the simple to the complex, overcoming internal contradictions and passing through special phases, which he called socio-economic formations. The entire history of society can be divided into stages, depending on how the production of goods is carried out. Marx called them modes of production. There are five historical modes of production (also called socio-economic formations).
History begins with a primitive communal formation in which people worked together, there was no private property, exploitation, inequality and social classes. The second stage is the slaveholding formation, or mode of production. This type of society arose on the ruins of a primitive community, when a surplus product appeared, the gratuitous appropriation of someone else's unpaid labor, private property, the state and classes. Slaves and slave owners were considered the main classes. The former were captured during countless wars and given to the latter as their eternal property. They disposed of the slaves as talking tools.
Slavery was replaced by feudalism - a mode of production based on the exploitation of personally and land dependent direct producers by landowners. It originated at the end of the 5th century. as a result of the decomposition of the slave-owning, and in some countries (including among the Eastern Slavs) primitive communal system. The main features of the feudal mode of production are: 1) the dominance of natural economy; 2) a combination of large feudal tenure and small-scale peasant (allotment) land use; 3) personal dependence of the peasants on the feudal lord, non-economic coercion of the peasants to surplus labor; 4) low state of technology; 5) political domination of the monarch, feudal lords.
The essence of the basic economic law of feudalism is the production of a surplus product in the form of feudal rent in the form of labor, food and cash rent. The main production method is Agriculture. The main wealth and means of production is land, which is privately owned by the landowner and leased to the peasant for temporary use (lease). He pays rent to the feudal lord, in food or money, allowing him to live not only comfortably, but also in idle luxury. The huge state apparatus and numerous clergy are fed at the expense of the peasants. Barons, princes and counts create their own armed detachments, fiercely fight among themselves for new territories, and with the king - for political power. Between battles, they build luxurious castles and sponsor the arts.
The peasant is more free than the slave, but less free than the hired worker, who, along with the owner-entrepreneur, becomes the main figure in the next - capitalist - stage of development. The main mode of production is mining and manufacturing. Feudalism seriously undermined the basis of its economic well-being - the peasant population, a significant part of which was ruined and turned into proletarians, people without property and status. They filled the cities where factories and plants were being built at that time. The most far-sighted landowners and quick-witted merchants guessed that the most productive factor is a legally free worker who regularly receives wages. Workers enter into a contract with the employer, or agreement, which limits the exploitation to certain norms, consistent with legal laws. The owner of the enterprise does not put money in the chest, and puts his capital into circulation. The size of the profit he receives is determined by the situation on the market, the art of management and the rationality of the organization of labor.
The communist formation completes the story, which returns people to primitive equality, but on a higher material basis. The previous formations took care that technical progress bring to the highest point. Capitalism did its best, under which for the first time science is transformed into the direct productive force of society. It is capitalism that unites people, organizes the workers into an independent class, ready to take power into its own hands. Having gone through the school of industrial labor, the proletariat learned to manage production and manage without the help of the capitalists. In a systematically organized communist society, there will be no private property, inequality, social classes and the state as a machine of repression.
Communism passes in its development a lower phase - socialism, and a higher one - directly communism. According to Marx, this is a classless society with a high level of productive forces, consciousness and culture, when labor turns into a vital need and the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” operates, the state is replaced by self-government of citizens. According to Marx, this is the true realm of freedom, when "the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all."
3. The historical significance of Marx's theory
According to Marx's point of view, formations are the "stages" of the development of society, from the least progressive to the most progressive. Having found out to which formation this or that society belongs, the sociologist gets the opportunity to determine its historical age. And this means that Marx's formational theory is a historical time scale for the development of mankind. True, it is not graded according to years, archaeological or geological epochs, but in some other way. If you know how much is measured out for the slave system or capitalism, you can always find out when they are replaced by another, more progressive one. social order. Moreover, the signs of decay and the emergence of a new one (in the bowels of the old society) are determined on the basis of qualitative, and not quantitative methods. The signal is the moment when the productive forces have outgrown the relations of production that their formation, say, feudalism, imposes on them. When the productive forces (of course, not the material, but their human component) are ready to rebel, sweep this system off the face of the earth. Either history itself controls the fate of the formation, dispenses with the revolutionary masses, but by its own means - the logic of objective laws to which every society is subject - forces one formation to give way to another.
Social changes in society always start from below, with the transformation of the productive forces, for example, during the industrial revolution, and the change in the nature of production relations, in particular, the change in the relationship of domination and subordination to the relationship of equality and justice. Part of the productive forces, for example the working class, which has realized its historical mission of liberating the whole of society from exploitation, organizes itself into a political party and puts forward leaders from among the progressively thinking intelligentsia.
The replacement of one type of society by another occurs as a dynamic process - through the mechanism of class struggle. The most conflicting societies are considered to be those where there is private property that divides people, unequal attitudes to the means of production and antagonistic classes competing for limited quantity life blessings. Slavery, feudalism and capitalism fall under this characteristic, which constantly shake class battles between slaves and slave owners, peasants and landowners, workers and capitalists.
The functioning and change of formations is subject to general laws that bind them into a single process of the progressive movement of mankind. At the same time, each formation has its own special laws of emergence and development. The unity of the historical process does not mean that every social organism goes through all formations. Humanity as a whole goes through them, “pulling itself up” to those countries and regions where the most progressive mode of production in a given historical era has won and superstructural forms corresponding to it have developed.
Each social formation has its own stages and stages of development. “Economic epochs differ not in what is produced, but in how it is produced, by what means of labor. The means of labor are not only a measure of the development of human labor power, but also an indicator of those social relations in which labor is performed. Primitive society over the millennia of its existence has gone from a human horde to a tribal system and a rural community. Capitalist society - from manufacture to machine production, from eras of domination of free competition to the era of monopoly capitalism. The communist formation has two main phases - socialism and communism. Each stage is characterized by general and specific laws that make changes in the social structure of society, the social organization of labor, the life of people, and modify the superstructure of society. Such ethanes in the development of a formation are usually called periods or epochs.
The transition from one formation to another is carried out in a revolutionary way. In those cases where the formations are of the same type (for example, slavery, feudalism and capitalism are based on the exploitation of workers by the owners of the means of production), a process of gradual maturation of a new society in the bowels of the old one can be observed (say, capitalism in the bowels of feudalism), but the completion of the transition from the old society to new acts as a revolutionary leap.
When the relations of production are in accordance with the level and nature of the productive forces, society flourishes, its economy develops at a rapid pace. When the former do not correspond to the latter, when the productive forces outgrow the narrow framework of production relations, contradictions and social tensions are formed in society. Society is gradually moving from prosperity to stagnation, from high growth rates of social production to low ones. Obsolete relations of production hinder the development of the productive forces. If the contradiction deepens and reaches a certain critical point, the clash of the new productive forces with the old production relations passes into the stage of an open conflict, which is resolved in the course of the social revolution. It eliminates the old relations of production, replacing them with new, more progressive ones. “At a certain stage of their development, the material and productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing production relations, or - which is only a 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 fundamental change in economic, and after them all other relations, the social revolution is distinguished by its special depth and lays the foundation for a whole transitional period during which the revolutionary transformation of society is carried out. Content and duration transition period determined by the level of economic and cultural development country, the severity of class conflicts, the international situation, etc. world history transitional epochs are the same natural phenomenon as the established formations, and in their totality cover significant periods of history.
Each new social formation, denying the previous one, preserves and develops its achievements. Often against their own interests.
The transition from one formation to another, capable of creating higher production capacities, a more perfect system of economic, political and spiritual relations, is the content of historical progress.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I would like to draw brief conclusions on the issue of Marxist formational theory and its historical significance as a theory of social conflict.
According to V.F. Anurin's introduction of the concept of formation by Marx into sociological analysis provides a number of advantages. Firstly, it makes it possible to distinguish one period of the development of society from another according to fairly clear criteria. Secondly, it can be used to find common essential features in the life of various societies (countries and peoples) that are at the same stage of development even in different historical periods, and vice versa, to explain the differences in the development of two societies coexisting in the same period, but with different methods of production. Thirdly, the formational approach makes it possible to analyze society as a single social organism, that is, to consider all social phenomena (based on one mode of production or another) in organic unity and interaction. Fourthly, this approach makes it possible to reduce the aspirations and actions of individuals to the actions of large masses of people.
K. Marx did not deny the progressive role of the division of labor - on the contrary, like E. Durkheim (but long before him), he assigned it the role of a mechanism for the historical genesis of society. However, unlike Durkheim, he gave the anomalous functions of the division of labor (exploitation, unemployment, impoverishment, etc.) not an accidental and transient, but a fatalistic and irremovable character. The division of labor leads not only to the birth of the social structure of society, but to its split into two antagonistic classes - the exploiters and the exploited. The former exist due to the gratuitous appropriation of the surplus product created by the labor of the latter. The slave system and feudalism create what capitalism brings to its logical end - the irremovable antagonism between labor and capital, the inevitability of a revolutionary replacement of the old regime and the establishment of a new, socially just society (communism).
According to Marx, mechanical solidarity, if Durkheim's terminology is used, is characteristic of all really existing formations, including the primitive communal system. Only a new - communist formation creates organic solidarity, that is, such collectivism, which is a condition for the all-round development of the individual. Marx called it true collectivism. In contrast, imaginary collectivism (analogous to Durkheim's mechanical solidarity) is based on the corporate, or class, solidarity of the proletarians and the bourgeoisie within their class and the class struggle. No reforms can overthrow the old system; what is needed is a socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under socialism, private property cannot exist, classes disappear from the historical arena, the distinction between mental and physical labor is destroyed, and the basic law of the planned organization of social labor will be the proportional distribution of the labor force among the branches of the national economy, the change of labor (in fact, its despecialization), equalization in pay labor (depending on the invested labor and family size, and not on the social and official status of the individual) and the mechanism of non-market pricing.
The methodology of K. Marx turned out to be very useful. The dialectical logic that Marxism inherited from Hegel was cleansed of many scholastic strata and reoriented positivist attitudes so strongly that it reduced them, in fact, to general scientific requirements to test theory by practice and rely on the strength of facts. The dialectical method gave a special harmony to the theoretical constructions of Marx. The doctrine of the alienation of labor, the formal and real subordination of labor to capitalism, abstract and concrete labor, social transformed forms of labor activity, the labor theory of value, which are of paramount importance for sociology, appeared not due to an inductive generalization of facts, but to a theoretical method of analysis that combined the dialectical logic, methodology of "ideal types" and mental experiment (elements of comparative historical research), cause-and-effect explanation. It was the theoretical method of Marx that served as a stimulating beginning for the emergence in the 30s. 20th century Frankfurt School of Labor Sociology (M. Horkheimer, T. Adorno, E. Fromm, G. Marcuse, J. Habermas), whose representatives made a significant contribution to the development of the concept of "industrial society" and the alienation of labor.
The main contribution of the Marxist school to world sociology is considered the theory of social conflict (therefore, Marxism, as a trend in social thought, is also called a conflict perspective). Much less impact on modern science rendered economic theory Marx, which was not explicitly taken into account by most Western economists when developing their own models.
In other words, Marx is not among the pure economists. Serious criticism, in particular, from G. Simmel and M. Scheler, was subjected to his labor theory of value and the concept of labor reduction (reduction of complex labor to simple). His theory of the relative and absolute impoverishment of the proletariat did not stand the test of time, just as some other propositions were not confirmed. In many respects this can be explained by the fact that, contrary to his own methodological principles, to rely on facts, Marx adhered more to the abstract formulas of the English political economists and the philosophical schemes of Hegel. From the point of view of the representatives of the German historical school, the choice of the object of research should also seem rather strange: is it ever seen that a German goes to England, where he studies the laws of the development of capitalism, then declares them universally applicable to all countries, regardless of cultural specifics, teaching the Germans how to arrange their lives?
The laws of capitalism, discovered by Marx on English soil, were categorically rejected by many German intellectuals, including Weber. Nevertheless, the teachings of K. Marx remain a great achievement of human culture, and from time to time the interest that arises in the West in his heritage (“Marx's renaissances”) testifies to the enormous potential of radicalist-oriented social theories.
LITERATURE
Kravchenko A.I. History of foreign sociology. - M.: Culture,
Academic project, 2005. C. 75.
Vorontsov A.V. History of sociology XIX - early. XX century: In 2 hours. Part 1. Western sociology. - M.: Humanitarian publishing center Vlados, 2005. S. 59.
Ivanov D.V. Sociology: theory and history. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2006; Kravchenko S.A. Sociology. 2nd ed. - M.: Exam, 2004, etc.
Marx K.. Engels F. Op. T. 13. S. 7.
Weber M. Fav. works. M., 1990. S. 404.
Kravchenko A.I. History of foreign sociology. - M.: Culture, Academic project, 2005; Sociology / Ed. V.N. Lavrinenko. - M.: Unit, 2005, etc.
This term is most popular in Russian literature, although another one can be used along with it - a social formation. Kravchenko A.I. History of foreign sociology. S. 247.
But not completely and completely, as supporters of economic determinism sometimes believe. If there were a strictly one-to-one correspondence and a rigid connection between the level of the country's economy and the degree of cultural development, then the richest countries would have the most diverse culture. But this is not always the case. Therefore, we can only speak of a partial dependence of the superstructure on the basis.
Burovoy M. Marxism after communism // Frontier, 1993. No. 2.
Pletnikov Yu.K. Formation and civilizational triads of K. Marx // Kravchenko A.I. History of foreign sociology... S. 246.
K. Marx. Toward a critique of political economy. Op. T. 13. S. 8.
Gorelov A.A. Sociology. - M.: Eksmo, 2006; Ivanov D.V. Sociology: theory and history. - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2006; Kravchenko A.I. History of foreign sociology. - M.: Culture, Academic project, 2005, etc.
Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 22, S. 191.
Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 13, S. 7.
Kravchenko A.I. History of foreign sociology. S. 77.
1. The more unevenly distributed scarce resources in the system, the deeper the conflict of interests between the dominant and subordinate segments (social groups) of the system.
2. The more subordinate groups become aware of their interests, the more likely they will question the legitimacy and fairness of the currently existing form of distribution of scarce resources.
3. The more the subordinate groups of the system are aware of their interests, the more they doubt the legitimacy of the distribution of scarce resources, the more likely they will have to come into common conflict with the dominant groups of the system.
4. The stronger the polarization of dominators and subordinates, the more violent the conflict will be.
5. The more violent the conflict, the more structural changes in the system and the redistribution of missing resources.
These key theses of Marx, interpreted by Turner, explain the causes and factors of the conflict and their influence on the specifics of the development of the conflict.
Marx developed the theory of social conflict in society. But the above theses are also applicable to the theory of conflict of a social group of a lower level - the organization of a labor group. So, according to the named provisions, conflict is an inevitable and widespread feature of the development of an organization.
One of the main causes of organizational conflict is the lack of resources and in particular power, as well as the uneven and unfair distribution of these resources.
More high level development of the organization and, consequently, a higher level of awareness by subordinates of their group motivational components (interests, goals, values) cause more frequent positive open conflict situations. Increasing mismatch between the interests of subordinates and management causes more violent forms of conflict.
Violent forms of organizational conflicts entail more radical organizational changes and redistribution of resources (peaceful forms better regulate interpersonal relations but do not always radically eliminate the true causes of conflicts, and when relations are settled, the illusion of eliminating the conflict is created).
The weak manifestation of their interests by the management as administrators, the fragmentation of the administrative structure, is more likely to cause collective mass conflict actions of subordinates.
Confirmation of the correctness of these interpretations of the provisions of Marx's teachings in relation to the organization can be found in modern studies of the conflict and descriptions of the practical experience of conflict situations.
Similarly, you can shift the theories of other classics of conflictology to the conditions of the organization (independently describe the other three theories for the enterprise).
L. Georg Simmel's Conflict Functionalism Most scholars attribute Simmel to the founders of theoretical conflictology. He believed that conflict in society is inevitable and unavoidable. But if Marx presented the social structure of society in the form of dominant and subordinate strata, the conflict, in his opinion, grows in the “dominance-subordination” system and always leads to destruction or social changes, then Simmel presented the social structure of society in the form of inextricably interconnected processes of association and dissociation of its elements conflict is a natural component of these processes, and since conflict is inherent in both dissociation and association, it does not necessarily lead to the destruction of the system or social change.
Simmel notes the positive consequences of conflicts: the preservation and strengthening of the social system as an integrity, the cohesion and unification of the social organism.
As sources of conflict, Simmel calls not only a clash of interests, but also the manifestation by people of the so-called "instincts of hostility." The instinct of hostility can increase the intensity of the conflict. It is possible to soften the conflict thanks to the harmony of relations between people and the instinct of love.
That. Simmel identifies peculiar factors that influence the nature of the course of the conflict - the instincts of love and hate.
Simmel sees conflict as a variable variable that exhibits varying degrees of intensity or strength. The extreme points of the scale of intensity are competition and struggle. Simmel defined wrestling as a chaotic direct battle of the parties. Competition is a more ordered mutual struggle that leads to their mutual isolation.
Unlike Marx, who believed that the conflict in the end necessarily intensifies, acquires a revolutionary character and leads to structural changes in the system. Simmel more often analyzed less intense and acute conflicts, which strengthen the strength and integration of the social system. However, Simmel made several judgments about the sharpness and strength of the conflict that are significant for general conflictology. These judgments were formalized and tabulated by Turner.
Table (fragment) Simmel's key points regarding the severity of conflicts
1. The more groups involved in the emotional conflict, the more acute the conflict.
2. The better "grouped" the groups involved in the conflict, the sharper it is.
3. The higher the relative cohesion of the groups involved in the conflict, the more acute the conflict.
4. The stronger the consent of those involved in the conflict, the sharper the conflict.
5. The less isolated and aggravated the conflicting groups due to the broad social structure, the more acute the conflict.
6. The more the conflict becomes an end in itself, the more acute it is.
7. The more, according to its participants, the conflict goes beyond the limits of individual goals and interests, the sharper it is.
From the statements it follows that the stronger emotions caused by the conflict are more likely to lead to the use of violence. In interpersonal conflicts, feelings caused by former intimacy, enmity or jealousy will increase the severity of the conflict. In intergroup conflicts, the internal cohesion of groups, the internal harmony of the relations of the groups involved in the conflict, is more likely to cause violence.
Question: Do these observations of Simmel mean that to reduce the sharpness possible conflict Is it possible with the help of weakening the emotional attachments of the members of the group, the isolation and fragmentation of the group? Should the leader, in order to avoid sharp conflicts, seek to reduce the cohesion of the group members?
So, theoretical conflictology owes its origin to Marx and Simmel (as well as to Kozzer and Dahrendorf, about which later)