The development of society: what was, what is

The history of human civilization has always had features in every period of its existence and in different regions of the planet. The modern world, as we know it now, has become such not only thanks to technical innovations. His development was also promoted by the constant development of society with its stagnation, sharp leaps and revolutions. In economic and socio-political thought, there were many different approaches to the allocation of such levels of social development. However, today the development of society is divided into such generalized stages.

The Agrarian Society

This society is represented by peasants, of which it consists almost entirely. It is the work on the ground and the cultivation of garden and garden crops that is the foundation of such a society. Commodity exchange of money takes place only in rudimentary form.

Industrial Society

It arose as a result of the industrial revolution and the replacement of manual labor by machine, which greatly changed the development of society and the socio-economic relations in it.

Post-industrial society

This stage has already reached many countries in the Western world. It is also called information, because it is information that becomes the most valuable factor in this period. The main stages of the development of the information society have not yet been fully explored.

The Marxist approach

A deeper and fuller assessment, reflecting the stages of the development of society, was the work of Karl Marx in the middle of the XIX century, as well as his followers later. The history of human society Marx divided into five basic formations.

Primitive-communal formation

The society did not have any surplus of its work. Everything was consumed.

The slave-owning formation

The welfare of society as a whole was based on the forced labor of slaves.

The feudal formation

In such a society, there was a ladder hierarchy of the overlord and the personally dependent vassal. The grass-roots structures of this society ensure its vital activity.

An Important Moment

This and the previous formations correlate with the agrarian society. Marx did not particularly distinguish in his own works, but later researchers note that simultaneously with medieval Europe in the East there was a so-called polity mode of production. It can not be called feudalism, since there was no social ladder, all the land formally belonged to the ruler, and all subjects were his slaves, deprived of all rights at will. Hardly a medieval European king could do so with his own feudal lords.

The capitalist formation

Here coercion was not violent methods, but economic levers. There is a private law, new classes, the concept of commercial activity. Capitalism arises from the same reasons as the industrial society.

The communist formation

Capitalism, according to Marxist theorists, was reborn into imperialism, characterized by the extreme exploitation of the working masses by a handful of merchants. As a result, the concept of a world revolution and the establishment of a more just society was born. However, the further development of society and the Cold War demonstrated that the building of communism, at least at this stage, is impossible. And capitalism under the pressure of the latter has outgrown itself, forcing the oligarchs of the West to provide guarantees for improving the economic situation of the lower strata in order to avoid the spread of leftist tendencies.