Social formation

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In sociology , politics and history, the terms social formation , social form or social system are understood to mean the historically determined structure and social organizational form of societies . The concept of social formation, which was mainly coined by Karl Marx , encompasses the totality of all social conditions that distinguish one particular form of society from another. Examples of social formations are the ancient slave-holding society , the medieval feudal society , modern capitalism , fascism or communism .

term

The term must be distinguished from the terms of the form of government and the political system . In contrast to these, which only include partial aspects of a society, the concept of the social form is broader and also includes non-state social and cultural practices, in particular also economic aspects.

Use of the term in Marxism

In the Marxist theory of historical materialism in particular , “social formation” is a central term. There it describes the totality of all historically and specifically found socio-economic relationships of a particular society. According to Karl Marx , a certain mode of production forms the " economic basis " of society in all forms of society. This basis has a structuring and ultimately determining effect on the other social phenomena, which as legal forms, political systems and "ruling ideas" form the social "superstructure". In a formulation that has become famous, Marx writes:

“The totality of these relations of production forms the economic structure of society, the real basis on which a legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual life process in general. It is not people's consciousness that determines their being, but, conversely, their social being that determines their consciousness. "

In more recent Marxist theories - especially in Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser - as well as in some representatives of post-Marxism , such as Ernesto Laclau , the focus is more strongly placed on the social superstructure and culture than in Marx . Marxism-Leninism in particular is accused of a shortened “economist” conception of history. Even with Marx, the dominant role of the economic is not to be understood as absolute. On the contrary, he emphasizes the possibility of non-simultaneities and contradictions between the base and the superstructure, the material and the ideal. Nevertheless, it is clear to Marx:

“A social formation never perishes before all productive forces for which it is sufficiently developed have been developed, and new, higher relations of production never take their place before the material conditions of existence of the same have been hatched in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore, humanity only ever sets itself tasks that it can solve, because if you look more closely you will always find that the task itself only arises where the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least are in the process of becoming. "

Class struggle as a motor of social development

According to Marx, every historical form of society - apart from the classless primitive society , which Friedrich Engels occasionally referred to as " primitive communism " or "communism of poverty" - is characterized by class struggles :

“The history of all previous society is the history of class struggles. Free and slave, patrician and plebeian , baron and serf , guild citizen and companion , in short, the oppressor and the oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another, waged an uninterrupted, sometimes hidden, sometimes open struggle, a struggle that was each time with a revolutionary transformation of the whole society ended or with the common downfall of the fighting classes. "

For Marx, belonging to a social class is determined by one's position in the production process, in particular by ownership of the means of production . Every class society is characterized by the opposition of two main classes, which are opposed to one another as oppressors and oppressed, with the former as the “ruling class” having a decisive influence on society. Since the dissolution of primitive society, the development and gradual replacement of the social formations has taken place through the class struggle, which is regarded as the central motor of social development: "The revolutions are the locomotives of history."

Overall, the Marxist conception of society stands in the Hegelian tradition of a step-by-step model of progress in history . Accordingly, society is always only society at a certain historical stage of development. In contrast to Hegel, however, for Marx this development does not take place as an abstract movement of the world spirit . Rather, it arises from the contradictions and antagonisms inherent in every social formation . As a dialectical thinker , Marx, influenced by Young Hegelianism , emphasizes that this development takes place in dialectical leaps (see dialectics in Marx and Engels ).

For Joseph A. Schumpeter , any methodological fixation on a pure type of society leads to the pseudo problem: how one type can lead to another.

"As soon as we realize that pure feudalism and pure capitalism are both unrealistic creatures of our minds, the problem of what it was that turned one into the other is no longer a problem."

In The Accumulation of Capital , Rosa Luxemburg worked out that industrial capital constantly needs new sales markets outside the existing class system in order to continue the accumulation process and has therefore been dependent on an agricultural sector and a world market with colonial ownership, i.e. on non-capitalist sectors, from the beginning of its historical existence is.

Important social formations

Important historical social formations are, according to Marx the classless primitive society of the early tribal societies that of agriculture and despotic rule coined " Asian mode of production ", the slave society of antiquity , the feudalism of the Middle Ages and the bourgeois capitalist mode of production, through their development trends the end of the history of the Usher in humanity.

In capitalism, according to Marx, the self-earned property of the independent labor individual was historically replaced by capitalist private property, which was based on the exploitation of foreign labor . With the progressive division of labor , the development of the productive forces and the growing exploitation, the concentration of the means of production and the concentration of labor reached a point where they would become increasingly incompatible with their capitalist shell.

In the course of a communist revolution , on the basis of the technical achievements of the capitalist age, private property would be replaced by "social property" or collective property . Such a society, however, develops out of a concrete society and is therefore initially "in every respect, economically, morally, spiritually, still afflicted with the birthmarks of the old society." This stage became different as socialism , underdeveloped communism or dictatorship of the proletariat . Only at a higher level of development could the classless society finally become reality:

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaved subordination of individuals to the division of labor, so that the opposition between mental and physical labor has also disappeared; after work has become not only a means to life but itself the first necessity of life; After the all-round development of individuals, their productive forces have grown and all the springs of the cooperative wealth flow more fully - only then can the narrow bourgeois legal horizon be completely exceeded and society can write on its banner: everyone according to their abilities, everyone according to their needs! "

Lenin coined the term imperialism as the highest and last stage of capitalism and the eve of the socialist revolution. In contrast to capitalism of free competition, imperialism is characterized, among other things, by the formation of monopolies , the amalgamation of bank and industrial capital to form finance capital and the priority of the export of capital over the export of goods. Like fascism, imperialism is not a separate social formation, but is treated in Marxism as part of the capitalist mode of production.

The historical attempts to build a socialist society, especially in the European Eastern Bloc, are mostly called real socialism , and some critics also call them state capitalism .

Other theories

In non-Marxist theories, the term “social system” is used more frequently instead of “social formation” or “social form”. The individual designations also vary from theory building to theory building (for example, instead of “bourgeois society” or “capitalism” one speaks more of “ democracy ”), but the idea of ​​a hierarchy of social systems, which goes back to Hegel, can be found in almost all schools of thought . Of course, it is also criticized by some, especially in the context of structuralism and post-structuralism , as ethnocentric .

In sociological systems theory, one speaks of “ social systems ”, in which, however, in contrast to the concept of social form, there is no historical replacement of different systems, but only the evolutionary development of “one” social system through increasing functional differentiation .

During National Socialism there were not only aggressive, vulgar-populist propaganda but also theoretical explanations of social theory and social formation. Then they differentiated “social formations” as naturally grown communities and as artificially formed societies. Races and peoples are historical units of humanity. The "National Socialist teaching" was based on folk research, racial studies and folklore. According to this, a national community was defined as the community of a people based on blood ties, common fate and common, political belief, which were alien to class and class differences.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels : Manifesto of the Communist Party . 1848. In: Marx-Engels-Werke. Volume 4, p. 480.
  2. ↑ Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy . Preface. 1859. In: Marx-Engels-Werke. Volume 13, pp. 8/9.
  3. ↑ Karl Marx: Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. 1857. In: Marx-Engels-Werke. Volume 13, pp. 639-642.
  4. ↑ Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. Preface. 1859. In: Marx-Engels-Werke. Volume 13, p. 9.
  5. ↑ Friedrich Engels : The origin of the family, private property and the state 1884. In: Marx-Engels-Werke. Volume 21, pp. 25-173.
  6. ^ Marx / Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party. In: Marx-Engels works. Volume 4, p. 462.
  7. ^ Marx: The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte , MEW 8, p. 85.
  8. ^ Joseph A. Schumpeter: History of economic analysis. Edited by Elizabeth B. Schumpeter. First part of the volume. Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965. p. 124.
  9. ^ Rosa Luxemburg: The accumulation of capital. In: Freedom is always only the freedom of those who think differently. Voltmedia Paderborn. ISBN 3-938478-73-X . P. 205 ff.
  10. ↑ Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy , Foreword, in: MEW 13, p. 9.
  11. ↑ Marx: Capital . In: Marx-Engels works. Volume 23, pp. 789/790 ( online at mlwerke.de).
  12. ↑ Marx: Capital. In: Marx-Engels works. Volume 23, p. 791 ( online at mlwerke.de).
  13. ^ Marx: Critique of the Gotha Program . MEW 19, p. 20
  14. ^ Karl Marx: Critique of the Gotha Program. In: Marx-Engels-.Werke. Volume 19, p. 21.
  15. ↑ Lenin: Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism , 1916/17.
  16. ↑ Lexicon A – Z in two volumes . First volume, Volkseigener Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1956, pp. 804–805.
  17. ↑ Der Volksbrockhaus A – Z , F. A. Brockhaus / Leipzig 1943, 10th edition, pp. 245 and 741.