The modern world that we know today has been created over millennia and has arisen not only and not so much thanks to technical innovations. To a no lesser extent, its development was influenced by social development. Each period in the history of human civilization has its own characteristics. In the socio-political and economic thought of recent centuries, there were many very different views and approaches to dividing the historical process into different stages of development of human society. Today, the classification of American futurologist Alvin Toffler is the most popular. The latter singled out the following stages of the development of society in history:
- Agrarian society. Represented almost entirely by the peasant population. It is the subsistence economy and the bulk nature of production that characterizes this period of development.
- Industrial society. It arose as a result of the massive technical innovations of the New Age: the replacement of manual labor with the machine and industrial revolution. These processes had a strong impact on social development, causing the intensification of commodity-capitalist relations, as well as social stratification.
- Post-industrial society. It should be remembered that the stages of development of society do not evenly penetrate into all corners of the planet. A number of countries of the "third world" today are barely surviving industrialization. At the same time, many Western countries have already passed this stage, entering the information stage. Postindustrial society is characterized by the fact that the bulk of the people in it are no longer engaged in the production of material goods. These processes are automated. Now the overwhelming majority of the population is engaged in all kinds of intellectual work.
Marxist view of the stages of development of society
The types of societies in the historical perspective, perhaps, were even more deeply and fully investigated by the German scientist Karl Marx. And later by many of his followers. Actually, it was in this methodology for the first time that it was proposed to look at society as the result of industrial relations. And this approach is today the most advanced and popular (not only in communist or socialist concepts). The stages of development of society by Marx were divided into five main formations.
- Primitive communal. At this stage, society did not at all have any excess product. Everything was consumed immediately without a trace. And that means that property stratification could not have arisen.
- Slaveholding. The well-being of society fundamentally rested on forced slave labor.
- Feudal, where there was a very specific hierarchy of vassals and overlords. The grassroots structures of such a society are the foundation of its life. An important characteristic of the feudal formation is the prevalence of subsistence, bulk farming. Interestingly, the stages of development of society emerged in the work of Marx on the basis of European experience. The theorist believed that such historical development is universal. However, as it turned out, this is not so. In the East, there was a completely different, politic mode of production. There was no vassal-overlord relationship, no private property (more importantly). Thus, feudalism turned out to be a strictly European phenomenon.
- Capitalism. According to Marx, capitalism is replacing feudalism, when violent methods of coercion are replaced by economic levers, the concept of commercial activity, new classes, etc.
- Communist formation. However, capitalism tends to increase the exploitation of workers and the constant deterioration of their position. According to Marxists, this state of affairs would sooner or later end in a revolution and the establishment of a more just society. These ideas had a major impact on the history of XX of our planet. At the same time, experience, as always, made significant adjustments both in assessing the viability of communism and in the development of capitalist states.