Lecture 7 (a) _ Capitalist formation

Capitalism – social-economic a formation based on the exploitation of hired labor, private ownership of the means of production (in the absence of any ownership of the bearer of labor power - humans); capitalism is also characterized by: the predominance of commodity production; formally declared freedom of enterprise; profit as the main goal of production activity.

The difference between capitalism and the antagonistic formations that preceded it is that the main producer (in this word, the hired worker) is formally free, he can leave his workplace, if it does not directly threaten the lives of other citizens. At the same time, the formal nature of this “freedom” becomes obvious as soon as we pay attention to the strict economic dependence under which a hired worker or employee, freed from violent forms of coercion to work, falls. Moreover, one can trace a pattern according to which, The more the worker liberates himself politically, the more the ruling class needs to enslave him in another way, namely by removing him from the products of his own labor, i.e. economically. Social wealth in the form of private property can turn a person into someone else’s property, both directly (slave, serf) and indirectly (proletarian). If at the individual level each hired worker feels freer than the serf peasant (who could not just leave his master), then at the level of the entire society this dependence manifests its insurmountable rigidity. Indeed, an employee is free to quit and not work, but how will he then receive a livelihood? In order to live, a person deprived of ownership of the means of production will be forced to get a job with another capitalist. It is possible that the conditions of exploitation for the new employer will be more lenient, but this does not change the most important thing: an individual, deprived of the means of production, is forced to sell his labor power in order to ensure at least the mere fact of his existence. The alternatives are either starvation or criminal activity, i.e. the alternative is extremely poor, I can’t even dare to call it “freedom”. That is why the definition of capitalism includes this indication that with a given method of production it is exploitation that occurs formally free labor force.

§ 1. Class structure of bourgeois-capitalist society

[main anthropological types Bur.-Cap. society]

Bourgeoisie - the ruling class of capitalist society, whose representatives own the means of production and live by appropriating surplus value in the form of profit.

Petty bourgeoisie- the lowest layer of the ruling class, whose representatives own small means of production and are either self-employed (that is, they work for themselves without being hired by anyone), or have the opportunity to exploit such a small number of hired workers that does not allow them to completely get rid of from productive labor. In other words, the petty bourgeoisie represents that layer of the bourgeoisie that continues to participate in productive labor.

Capitalists- the upper layer of the bourgeois class, capable of living exclusively through the exploitation of other people's labor.

Bureaucracy/bureaucracy (state bourgeoisie)– national managers; 1. designation of a layer of employees in large organizations that have arisen in various spheres of society. As a necessary element of administration, bureaucracy turns into a special social layer, which is characterized by hierarchy, strict regulation, division of labor and responsibility in the implementation of formalized functions that require special education. Bureaucracy is characterized by a tendency to become a privileged layer, independent of the majority of members of the organization, which is accompanied by an increase in formalism and arbitrariness, authoritarianism and conformism, the subordination of the rules and tasks of the organization’s activities mainly to the goals of its strengthening and preservation. 2. a specific form of social organizations in society (political, economic, ideological, etc.), the essence of which lies, firstly, in the separation of the centers of executive power from the will and decisions of the majority of members of this organization, and secondly, in the primacy of the form over the content of the activity of this organization organization, thirdly, in subordinating the rules and tasks of the organization’s functioning to the goals of its preservation and strengthening. B. is inherent in a society built on social inequality and exploitation, when power is concentrated in the hands of one or another narrow ruling group. The fundamental feature of B. is the existence and growth of a layer of bureaucrats - a privileged bureaucratic-administrative caste divorced from the people.

Managers– private managers, a professional group of hired employees who carry out managerial work within the framework of the enterprise (firm) that hired them.

Proletariat - a subordinate class of capitalist society, whose representatives are deprived of ownership of the means of production and therefore are not able to individually significantly influence the organization of production, and in order to live they are forced to sell their labor power.

Labor aristocracy- a privileged part of the working class, whose representatives have the most valuable and rare labor skills, a high level of skill and are highly valued by the owners of production. The wages of such workers are noticeably higher than those of the majority of ordinary workers, and during a crisis they are the last to be fired.

Paupers– [lit. “poor”] is the lowest, the poorest, the exploited

and a disenfranchised layer of the proletariat.

The bulk of the workers- the majority of the proletariat, distinguished according to the residual principle, by cutting off the upper and lower layers.

Intelligentsia – (from Latin itelliges understanding, thinking, reasonable),

social stratum of people professionally engaged

mental, mainly complex, creative work,

development and dissemination of culture.

Lumpen – (from German Lumpen - rags) – the totality of all declassed

layers of the population (tramps, homeless people, beggars, criminal elements, etc.).

Capitalism- a socio-economic formation based on private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of wage labor by capital, replaces feudalism and precedes the first phase.

Etymology

Term capitalist in meaning capital owner appeared earlier than the term capitalism, back in the middle of the 17th century. Term capitalism first used in 1854 in the novel The Newcomes. They first began to use the term in its modern meaning. In Karl Marx's work "Capital" the word is used only twice; instead, Marx uses the terms "capitalist system", "capitalist mode of production", "capitalist", which appear in the text more than 2600 times.

The essence of capitalism

Main features of capitalism

• The dominance of commodity-money relations and private ownership of the means of production;
• The presence of a developed social division of labor, the growth of socialization of production, the transformation of labor into goods;
• Exploitation of wage workers by capitalists.

The main contradiction of capitalism

The goal of capitalist production is to appropriate the surplus value created by the labor of wage workers. As relations of capitalist exploitation become the dominant type of production relations and bourgeois political, legal, ideological and other social institutions replace pre-capitalist forms of the superstructure, capitalism turns into a socio-economic formation that includes the capitalist mode of production and the corresponding superstructure. Capitalism goes through several stages in its development, but its most characteristic features remain essentially unchanged. Capitalism is characterized by antagonistic contradictions. The main contradiction of capitalism between the social nature of production and the private capitalist form of appropriation of its results gives rise to anarchy of production, unemployment, economic crises, an irreconcilable struggle between the main classes of capitalist society - and the bourgeoisie - and determines the historical doom of the capitalist system.

The emergence of capitalism

The emergence of capitalism was prepared by the social division of labor and the development of a commodity economy within the depths of feudalism. In the process of the emergence of capitalism, at one pole of society a class of capitalists was formed, concentrating money capital and the means of production in their hands, and at the other - a mass of people deprived of the means of production and therefore forced to sell their labor power to the capitalists.

Stages of development of pre-monopoly capitalism

Initial accumulation of capital

Developed capitalism was preceded by a period of so-called primitive accumulation of capital, the essence of which was the robbery of peasants, small artisans and the seizure of colonies. The transformation of labor power into goods and the means of production into capital meant the transition from simple commodity production to capitalist production. The initial accumulation of capital was simultaneously a process of rapid expansion of the domestic market. Peasants and artisans, who previously subsisted on their own farms, turned into hired workers and were forced to live by selling their labor power and buying necessary consumer goods. The means of production, which were concentrated in the hands of a minority, were converted into capital. An internal market for the means of production necessary for the resumption and expansion of production was created. Great geographical discoveries and the seizure of colonies provided the nascent European bourgeoisie with new sources of capital accumulation and led to the growth of international economic ties. The development of commodity production and exchange, accompanied by the differentiation of commodity producers, served as the basis for the further development of capitalism. Fragmented commodity production could no longer satisfy the growing demand for goods.

Simple capitalist cooperation

The starting point of capitalist production was simple capitalist cooperation, that is, the joint labor of many people performing individual production operations under the control of the capitalist. The source of cheap labor for the first capitalist entrepreneurs was the massive ruin of artisans and peasants as a result of property differentiation, as well as the “fencing” of land, the adoption of poor laws, ruinous taxes and other measures of non-economic coercion. The gradual strengthening of the economic and political positions of the bourgeoisie prepared the conditions for bourgeois revolutions in a number of Western European countries: in the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century, in Great Britain in the mid-17th century, in France at the end of the 18th century, in a number of other European countries in the mid-19th century. Bourgeois revolutions, having carried out a revolution in the political superstructure, accelerated the process of replacing feudal production relations with capitalist ones, cleared the way for the capitalist system that had matured in the depths of feudalism, for the replacement of feudal property with capitalist property.

Manufacturing production. Capitalist factory

A major step in the development of the productive forces of bourgeois society was made with the advent of manufacture in the mid-16th century. However, by the middle of the 18th century, the further development of capitalism in the advanced bourgeois countries of Western Europe encountered the narrowness of its technical base. The need has become ripe for a transition to large-scale factory production using machines. The transition from manufacture to the factory system was carried out during the industrial revolution, which began in Great Britain in the 2nd half of the 18th century and was completed by the mid-19th century. The invention of the steam engine led to the appearance of a number of machines. The growing need for machines and mechanisms led to a change in the technical basis of mechanical engineering and the transition to the production of machines by machines. The emergence of the factory system meant the establishment of capitalism as the dominant mode of production and the creation of a corresponding material and technical base. The transition to the machine stage of production contributed to the development of productive forces, the emergence of new industries and the involvement of new resources in economic circulation, the rapid growth of urban populations and the intensification of foreign economic relations. It was accompanied by a further intensification of the exploitation of wage workers: the wider use of female and child labor, the lengthening of the working day, the intensification of labor, the transformation of the worker into an appendage of the machine, the growth of unemployment, the deepening of the opposition between mental and physical labor and the opposition between city and countryside. The basic patterns of development of capitalism are characteristic of all countries. However, different countries had their own characteristics of its genesis, which were determined by the specific historical conditions of each of these countries.

Development of capitalism in individual countries

United Kingdom

The classic path of development of capitalism - initial accumulation of capital, simple cooperation, manufacturing, capitalist factory - is characteristic of a small number of Western European countries, mainly Great Britain and the Netherlands. In Great Britain, earlier than in other countries, the industrial revolution was completed, the factory system of industry arose, and the advantages and contradictions of the new, capitalist mode of production were fully revealed. Extremely fast compared to others European countries the growth of industrial production was accompanied by the proletarianization of a significant part of the population, the deepening of social conflicts, and cyclical crises of overproduction regularly recurring since 1825. Great Britain has become a classic country of bourgeois parliamentarism and at the same time the birthplace of the modern labor movement. By the mid-19th century, it had achieved world industrial, commercial and financial hegemony and was the country where capitalism reached its greatest development. It is no coincidence that the theoretical analysis of the capitalist mode of production given was based mainly on English material. noted that the most important distinctive features of English capitalism of the 2nd half of the 19th century. there were “huge colonial possessions and a monopoly position on the world market”

France

The formation of capitalist relations in France - the largest Western European power of the era of absolutism - occurred more slowly than in Great Britain and the Netherlands. This was explained mainly by the stability of the absolutist state and the relative strength of the social positions of the nobility and small peasant farming. The dispossession of peasants did not occur through “fencing,” but through the tax system. A large role in the formation of the bourgeois class was played by the tax farming system and government debts, and later the government's protectionist policies towards the nascent manufacturing industry. The bourgeois revolution occurred in France almost a century and a half later than in Great Britain, and the process of primitive accumulation lasted for three centuries. Great french revolution Having radically eliminated the feudal absolutist system that hindered the growth of capitalism, it simultaneously led to the emergence of a stable system of small peasant land ownership, which left its mark on all further development of capitalist production relations in the country. The widespread introduction of machines began in France only in the 30s of the 19th century. In the 50-60s it turned into an industrialized state. Main feature French capitalism of those years was its usurious nature. The growth of loan capital, based on the exploitation of the colonies and profitable credit transactions abroad, turned France into a rentier country.

USA

The USA entered the path of capitalist development later than Great Britain, but by the end of the 19th century it became one of the advanced capitalist countries. Feudalism did not exist in the United States as an all-encompassing economic system. A major role in the development of American capitalism was played by the displacement of the indigenous population onto reservations and the development of vacated lands by farmers in the west of the country. This process determined the so-called American path of development of capitalism in agriculture, the basis of which was the growth of capitalist farming. The rapid development of American capitalism after Civil War 1861-65 led to the fact that by 1894 the United States took first place in the world in terms of industrial output.

Germany

In Germany, the abolition of the system of serfdom was carried out “from above.” The redemption of feudal dues, on the one hand, led to the mass proletarianization of the population, and on the other hand, it gave the landowners the capital necessary to transform the cadet estates into large capitalist farms using hired labor. Thus, the preconditions were created for the so-called Prussian path of development of capitalism in agriculture. The unification of the German states into a single customs union and the bourgeois Revolution of 1848-49 accelerated the development of industrial capital. An exceptional role in the industrial boom in the mid-19th century in Germany was played by railways, which contributed to the economic and political unification of the country and the rapid growth of heavy industry. The political unification of Germany and the military indemnity it received after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 became a powerful stimulus for the further development of capitalism. In the 70s of the 19th century, there was a process of rapid creation of new industries and re-equipment of old ones based on the latest achievements of science and technology. Taking advantage of the technical achievements of Great Britain and other countries, Germany was able to catch up with France in terms of economic development by 1870, and by the end of the 19th century to approach Great Britain.

In the East

In the East capitalism received greatest development in Japan, where, as in Western European countries, it arose on the basis of the decomposition of feudalism. Within three decades after the bourgeois revolution of 1867-68, Japan became one of the industrial capitalist powers.

Pre-monopoly capitalism

A comprehensive analysis of capitalism and the specific forms of its economic structure at the pre-monopoly stage was given by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in a number of works and, above all, in Capital, where the economic law of movement of capitalism was revealed. The doctrine of surplus value - the cornerstone of Marxist political economy - revealed the secret of capitalist exploitation. The appropriation of surplus value by capitalists occurs due to the fact that the means of production and means of subsistence are owned by a small class of capitalists. The worker, in order to live, is forced to sell his labor power. With his labor he creates more value than his labor costs. Surplus value is appropriated by capitalists and serves as a source of their enrichment and further growth of capital. The reproduction of capital is at the same time the reproduction of capitalist production relations based on the exploitation of other people's labor.

The pursuit of profit, which is a modified form of surplus value, determines the entire movement of the capitalist mode of production, including the expansion of production, the development of technology, and the increased exploitation of workers. At the stage of pre-monopoly capitalism, the competition of non-cooperative fragmented commodity producers is replaced by capitalist competition, which leads to the formation average norm profit, that is, equal profit on equal capital. The cost of goods produced takes the modified form of production price, which includes production costs and average profit. The process of profit averaging is carried out in the course of intra-industry and inter-industry competition, through the mechanism of market prices and the transfer of capital from one industry to another, through the intensification of competition between capitalists.

By improving technology at individual enterprises, using the achievements of science, developing means of transport and communication, improving the organization of production and commodity exchange, capitalists spontaneously develop social productive forces. The concentration and centralization of capital contribute to the emergence of large enterprises, where thousands of workers are concentrated, and lead to the growing socialization of production. However, enormous, ever-increasing wealth is appropriated by individual capitalists, which leads to a deepening of the main contradiction of capitalism. The deeper the process of capitalist socialization, the wider the gap between direct producers and the means of production owned by private capitalists. The contradiction between the social nature of production and capitalist appropriation takes the form of antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It also manifests itself in the contradiction between production and consumption. The contradictions of the capitalist mode of production are most acutely manifested in periodically recurring economic crises. There are two interpretations of their cause. One is related to the general one. There is also the opposite opinion, that the capitalist's profits are so high that the workers do not have enough purchasing power to buy all the goods. Being an objective form of violent overcoming of the contradictions of capitalism, economic crises do not resolve them, but lead to further deepening and aggravation, which indicates the inevitability of the death of capitalism. Thus, capitalism itself creates the objective prerequisites for a new system based on public ownership of the means of production.

Antagonistic contradictions and the historical doom of capitalism are reflected in the sphere of the superstructure of bourgeois society. The bourgeois state, no matter in what form it exists, always remains an instrument of class rule of the bourgeoisie, an organ of suppression of the working masses. Bourgeois democracy is limited and formal. In addition to the two main classes of bourgeois society (the bourgeoisie and), under capitalism, classes inherited from feudalism are preserved: the peasantry and landowners. With the development of industry, science and technology, and culture, the social stratum of the intelligentsia - people of mental labor - is growing in a capitalist society. The main trend in the development of the class structure of capitalist society is the polarization of society into two main classes as a result of the erosion of the peasantry and intermediate strata. The main class contradiction of capitalism is the contradiction between the workers and the bourgeoisie, expressed in an acute class struggle between them. In the course of this struggle, a revolutionary ideology is developed, political parties working class, the subjective preconditions for the socialist revolution are being prepared.

Monopoly capitalism. Imperialism

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, capitalism entered the highest and final stage of its development - imperialism, monopoly capitalism. Free competition at a certain stage led to such a high level of concentration and centralization of capital, which naturally led to the emergence of monopolies. They define the essence of imperialism. Denying free competition in certain industries, monopolies do not eliminate competition as such, “... but exist above it and next to it, thereby giving rise to a number of particularly acute and steep contradictions, frictions, and conflicts.” Scientific theory monopoly capitalism was developed by V.I. Lenin in his work “Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism.” He defined imperialism as “... capitalism at that stage of development when the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has emerged, the export of capital has acquired outstanding importance, the division of the world by international trusts has begun and the division of the entire territory of the earth by the largest capitalist countries has ended.” At the monopoly stage of capitalism, the exploitation of labor by financial capital leads to the redistribution in favor of monopolies of part of the total surplus value that falls on the share of the non-monopoly bourgeoisie, and required product wage workers through the mechanism of monopoly prices. Certain shifts are taking place in the class structure of society. The dominance of financial capital is personified in the financial oligarchy - the large monopoly bourgeoisie, which brings under its control the overwhelming majority of the national wealth of capitalist countries. Under the conditions of state-monopoly capitalism, the top of the big bourgeoisie is significantly strengthened, which has a decisive influence on the economic policy of the bourgeois state. The economic and political weight of the non-monopoly middle and petty bourgeoisie is decreasing. Significant changes are taking place in the composition and size of the working class. In all developed capitalist countries, with the total amateur population growing by 91% over the 70 years of the 20th century, the number of employed people increased almost 3 times, and their share in the total number of employed increased over the same period from 53.3 to 79.5%. In the conditions of modern technological progress, with the expansion of the service sector and the growth of the bureaucratic state apparatus, the number and proportion of employees who are approaching their social status with the industrial proletariat have increased. Under the leadership of the working class, the most revolutionary forces of capitalist society, all working classes and social strata, are fighting against the oppression of monopolies.

State-monopoly capitalism

In the process of its development, monopoly capitalism develops into state-monopoly capitalism, characterized by the merging of the financial oligarchy with the bureaucratic elite, the strengthening of the role of the state in all areas of public life, the growth of the public sector in the economy and the intensification of policies aimed at mitigating the socio-economic contradictions of capitalism. Imperialism, especially at the state-monopoly stage, means a deep crisis of bourgeois democracy, the strengthening of reactionary tendencies and the role of violence in internal and foreign policy. It is inseparable from the growth of militarism and military spending, the arms race and the tendency to unleash wars of aggression.

Imperialism extremely aggravates the basic contradiction of capitalism and all the contradictions of the bourgeois system based on it, which can only be resolved by a socialist revolution. V.I. Lenin gave a deep analysis of the law of uneven economic and political development capitalism in the era of imperialism and came to the conclusion about the possibility of the victory of the socialist revolution initially in one single capitalist country.

Historical significance of capitalism

As a natural stage in the historical development of society, capitalism played a progressive role in its time. He destroyed patriarchal and feudal relations between people, based on personal dependence, and replaced them with monetary relations. Capitalism created major cities, sharply increased the urban population at the expense of the rural one, destroyed feudal fragmentation, which led to the formation of bourgeois nations and centralized states, and raised the productivity of social labor to a higher level. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote:

“The bourgeoisie, in less than a hundred years of its class rule, has created more numerous and more ambitious productive forces than all previous generations combined. The conquest of the forces of nature, machine production, the use of chemistry in industry and agriculture, shipping, railways, the electric telegraph, the development of entire parts of the world for agriculture, the adaptation of rivers for navigation, entire masses of population, as if summoned from underground - which of the previous centuries could suspect that such productive forces lie dormant in the depths of social labor!

Since then, the development of productive forces, despite unevenness and periodic crises, has continued at an even more accelerated pace. Capitalism of the 20th century was able to put into its service many of the achievements of the modern scientific and technological revolution: atomic energy, electronics, automation, jet technology, chemical synthesis, and so on. But social progress under capitalism is carried out at the cost of a sharp aggravation of social contradictions, waste of productive forces, suffering of the masses of the people, everything globe. The era of primitive accumulation and capitalist “development” of the outskirts of the world was accompanied by the destruction of entire tribes and nationalities. Colonialism, which served as a source of enrichment for the imperialist bourgeoisie and the so-called labor aristocracy in the metropolises, led to a long stagnation of the productive forces in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and contributed to the preservation of pre-capitalist production relations in them. Capitalism has used the progress of science and technology to create destructive means of mass destruction. He is responsible for enormous human and material losses in the increasingly frequent and destructive wars. In just the two world wars unleashed by imperialism, over 60 million people died and 110 million were wounded or disabled. At the stage of imperialism, economic crises became even more acute.

Capitalism cannot cope with the productive forces it has created, which have outgrown capitalist relations of production, which have become fetters for their further unhindered growth. In the depths of bourgeois society, in the process of development of capitalist production, objective material prerequisites for the transition to socialism have been created. Under capitalism, the working class grows, unites and organizes, which, in alliance with the peasantry, at the head of all working people, constitutes a powerful social force capable of overthrowing the outdated capitalist system and replacing it with socialism.

Bourgeois ideologists, with the help of apologetic theories, try to argue that modern capitalism is a system devoid of class antagonisms, that in highly developed capitalist countries there are supposedly no factors giving rise to social revolution. However, reality shatters such theories, increasingly revealing the irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism.

This social formation, which is characterized by the advantage of commodity-money relations, has become widespread throughout the world in different variations.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Capitalism, which gradually replaced feudalism, arose in Western Europe in the 17th century. In Russia it did not last long, being replaced by the communist system for decades. Unlike other economic systems, capitalism is based on free commerce. The means of production of goods and services are privately owned. Other key features of this socio-economic formation include:

• the desire to maximize income and make a profit;
• the basis of the economy is the production of goods and services;
• widening gap between rich and poor;
• ability to adequately respond to changing market conditions;
• freedom of entrepreneurial activity;
• the form of government is basically democracy;
• non-interference in the affairs of other states.

Thanks to the emergence of the capitalist system, people made a breakthrough along the path of technological progress. This economic form is also characterized by a number of disadvantages. The main one is that all resources without which a person cannot work are privately owned. Therefore, the country's population has to work for the capitalists. Other disadvantages of this type of economic system include:

• irrational distribution of labor;
• uneven distribution of wealth in society;
• volumetric debt obligations (credits, loans, mortgages);
• large capitalists, based on their interests, influence the government;
• there is no powerful system for countering corruption schemes;
• workers receive less than their labor is actually worth;
• increased profits due to monopolies in some industries.

Each economic system that a society uses has its own strengths and weaknesses. Ideal option No. There will always be supporters and opponents of capitalism, democracy, socialism, and liberalism. The advantage of a capitalist society is that the system forces the population to work for the benefit of society, companies, and the state. Moreover, people always have the opportunity to provide themselves with a level of income that will allow them to live quite comfortably and prosperously.

Peculiarities

The goal of capitalism is to use the labor of the population for the efficient distribution and exploitation of resources. A person's position in society under such a system is not determined only by his social status and religious views. Any person has the right to realize himself using his abilities and capabilities. Especially now, when globalization and technological progress affect every citizen of a developed and developing country. The size of the middle class is constantly increasing, as is its importance.

Capitalism in Russia

This economic system took root in the territory modern Russia gradually, after serfdom was abolished. Over several decades there has been an increase in industrial production, agriculture. During these years, practically no foreign products were imported into the country on a large scale. Oil, machinery, and equipment were exported. This situation developed until the October Revolution of 1917, when capitalism with its freedom of enterprise and private property became a thing of the past.

In 1991, the Government announced the transition to a capitalist market. Hyperinflation, default, collapse of the national currency, denomination - all these terrible events and radical changes Russia experienced in the 90s. last century. Modern country lives in the conditions of a new capitalism, built taking into account the mistakes of the past.

Pre-capitalist methods of production were characterized by the division of society into various classes and estates, which created a complex hierarchical structure of society. The bourgeois era simplified class contradictions and replaced diversity different shapes hereditary privileges and personal dependence on the impersonal power of money, the unlimited despotism of capital. Under the capitalist mode of production, society is increasingly split into two large hostile camps, into two opposing classes - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie is the class that owns the means of production and uses them to exploit wage labor.

The proletariat is a class of wage workers deprived of the means of production and, as a result, forced to sell their labor power to the capitalists. On the basis of “machine production,” capital completely subjugated wage labor. For the class of wage workers, the proletarian condition became a lifelong destiny. Due to its economic situation, the proletariat is the most revolutionary class.

The bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the main classes of capitalist society. As long as the capitalist mode of production exists, these two classes are inextricably linked: the bourgeoisie cannot exist and get rich without exploiting wage workers; proletarians cannot live without being hired by the capitalists. At the same time, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are antagonistic classes whose interests are opposite and irreconcilably hostile. The ruling class of capitalist society is the bourgeoisie. The development of capitalism leads to a deepening of the gap between the exploiting minority and the exploited masses. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the driving force of capitalist society.

In all bourgeois countries, a significant part of the population is the peasantry.

The peasantry is a class of small producers who conduct their farming on the basis of private ownership of the means of production with the help of backward technology and manual labor. The bulk of the peasantry is mercilessly exploited by landowners, kulaks, merchants and moneylenders and is ruined. In the process of stratification, the peasantry continuously distinguishes from itself, on the one hand, the masses of proletarians and, on the other, kulaks and capitalists.

The capitalist state, which replaced the state of the feudal-serf era as a result of the bourgeois revolution, in its class essence is in the hands of capitalists an instrument of subjugation and oppression of the working class and peasantry. The bourgeois state protects capitalist private ownership of the means of production, ensures the exploitation of the working people and suppresses their struggle against the capitalist system.

Since the interests of the capitalist class are sharply opposed to the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population, the bourgeoisie is forced to hide the class character of its state in every possible way. The bourgeoisie is trying to present this state as supposedly supra-class, nation-wide, as a state of “pure democracy.” But in reality, bourgeois “freedom” is the freedom of capital to exploit the labor of others; bourgeois “equality” is a deception that covers up the actual inequality between the exploiter and the exploited, between the well-fed and the hungry, between the owners of the means of production and the mass of proletarians who own only their labor power.

The bourgeois state suppresses the popular masses with the help of its administrative apparatus, police, army, courts, prisons, concentration camps and other means of violence. A necessary addition to these means of violence are the means of ideological influence, with the help of which the bourgeoisie maintains its dominance. This includes the bourgeois press, radio, cinema, bourgeois science and art, and the church.

The bourgeois state is the executive committee of the capitalist class. Bourgeois constitutions aim to consolidate social orders that are pleasing and beneficial to the propertied classes. The basis of the capitalist system - private ownership of the means of production - is declared sacred and inviolable by the bourgeois state.

The forms of bourgeois states are very diverse, but their essence is the same: all of these states are the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, striving by all means to preserve and strengthen the system of exploitation of wage labor by capital.

As large-scale capitalist production grows, the number of the proletariat increases, which becomes increasingly aware of its class interests, develops politically and organizes itself to fight against the bourgeoisie.

The proletariat is a working class that is associated with an advanced form of economy - with large-scale production. “Only the Proletariat, due to its economic role in large-scale production, is capable of being the leader of all the working and exploited masses”1. The industrial proletariat, which is the most revolutionary, most advanced class of capitalist society, is capable of gathering around itself the working masses of the peasantry, all the exploited sections of the population, and leading them to storm capitalism.

According to the Marxist concept, each society successively passes through several stages in its development - socio-economic formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, socialist and communist.

The formation of society and progressive transformations are based on the following logic:

labor development production social

Evolution of relationship forces

An objective change in production relations constitutes the content of social progress, and their specificity is an evaluative indicator of the quality of the social system.

The leading social subject, who owns the capital of the productive forces - the means of production and labor (its qualifications and scientific thought), determines production relations, constructing a socio-economic formation and directing all the most important social instruments in the direction of expressing their interests. The development of productive forces leads to the need for a systemic transformation of society, a change in the leading social subject and production relations.

The first formational transition (from the primitive communal system to slave ownership) took place on the basis of the emergence of several social components: the market, goods, a little later, money and social institutions– first of all, economic and political (state and legal legislation), as well as the modern form of the family. It was at the dawn of slavery that the social system took on its stable elemental configuration, which has survived to this day.

But in addition, the new socio-economic formation is characterized by the emergence of private ownership of the means of production and exploitation. It was these qualitative expressions of the objective development of the productive forces that supplemented labor production relations with new content - the struggle for capital and power, that is, for subjective priority in the construction of the personal-social system and its management. This struggle became the basis of social progress and permeated all subsequent history.

The corresponding deep division of social interests was expressed in the fundamental opposition of the most important economic socio-positional groups, the emergence and irreconcilable relations of which were determined by the private form of ownership of the means of production and all capital. “Free and slave, patrician and plebeian, landowner and serf..., in short, the oppressor and the oppressed were in eternal antagonism to each other, waged a continuous, sometimes hidden, sometimes open struggle, always ending in a revolutionary reorganization of the entire social edifice...”.

The highest stage of the period of social development with private ownership is capitalist society. Although Marx does not note a fundamental qualitative difference between slavery, feudalism and capitalism. Private ownership of the means of production and capital is the basis that levels out all the differences between these socio-economic formations. It creates its own special method of reproduction of goods and the principle of income distribution, characterized by exploitation in the form of ex-propriation of part of the profit or all of the profit by the owner of the means of production exclusively by right of ownership. “Slavery is the first form of exploitation inherent in the ancient world; it is followed by serfdom in the Middle Ages and wage labor in modern times. These are the three great forms of enslavement which characterize the great ages of civilization; open, and more recently disguised slavery always accompanies her.” The only difference is in the time, conditions and object of operation. In the slave-owning formation, a slave was subjected to exploitation - an absolutely unfree person, forcibly chained to his master throughout the entire time. Feudalism and capitalism ex-propriate the profit created by the wage labor of a formally free person, who, however, objectively driven by his natural needs, still comes to the means of production, and therefore to their owner, and is forced to accept all his conditions. The main one is agreement, in exchange for labor, the creation of goods and wages, to give profit to the owner of private property and transfer the most precious thing he has - labor power into someone else's capital.

Thus, the evolutionary development of the period of private ownership of the means of production is determined by the replacement of open and forceful coercion of a person with coercion of labor - “hidden, voluntary and therefore hypocritical.” Only capitalism, unlike feudalism, works in conditions of industrial growth and urbanization due to a powerful breakthrough in the development of productive forces.

The exploitative stage of human progress for the first time in social history creates a mass phenomenon of social alienation, which in these conditions is based on the fundamental rejection of the instruments of creative activity (means of production and labor, as well as the main monetary result of production - profit) from their true owner and creator - labor in the form of a slave or hired worker. This is how the social process of turning labor into a servant of capital takes place, with all the ensuing consequences for the entire social system.

It is obvious that the private form of capital forms social-positional groups that fundamentally differ from each other in all economic parameters-features and integration status in the economic hierarchy. First of all, by ownership of the means of production and the method of generating income, as well as by the income itself. The most active and active of these groups, directly related to production, form classes that occupy the two highest positions in the corresponding system of production relations.

Classes are the result of a high level of progressive social development. They concretized the social space, expanded and diversified it, supplemented it with completely new subjects and their communication connections. But the main thing is that from the moment of their appearance, taking different forms in the course of social history, they gave it new content, were the organizational engine of social progress, supplementing the quantitative component of labor with the quality of social group antagonism.

Their confrontation served as a source for the formation of a special type of human consciousness - social and humanitarian knowledge and ideological principles, the decisive scientific formulation of which occurred, of course, much later - in the 19th century.

Capitalism is the most progressive social system with a private (personal) form of ownership of the means of production. It forms two classes - capitalists and the proletariat (who do not own the means of production and sell their labor power, which creates goods and services, is exploited and receives wages).

A capitalist is the owner of all components of capital, including physical (means of production) and human (wage labor). The historical birth and functioning of the capitalist form a fundamental interval of social evolution in terms of the most important properties of capital itself - objective expansion and subjective concentration in the process of capitalist economic competition.

These properties are in the vector of development of productive forces and transform a small part of independent individual craftsmen into owners of all capital. The further historical movement of capitalist relations brings this formation to an even higher quality level, where the role of centralization is greatly enhanced: “The capitalist mode of production, which at first displaced independent workers, is now displacing the capitalists themselves, although not yet into the industrial reserve army, but only into the category surplus population."

Capitalism, already contemporary to K. Marx, was characterized by the unification of banking and industrial property in the hands of a single, most active capitalist subject. An industrialist-capitalist who has gained strength does not trust his profit, freed from commodity reproduction at a certain stage of its increase, to a third-party bank, but creates his own bank to provide credit. In turn, the financier-capitalist, who grew up on usury and stock market speculation, begins to buy shares industrial enterprises. Naturally, concentrating the main economic instruments and having a part of their colossal personal profit already free from economics, such capitalists cannot help but influence the formation of political power with further access to general social management. First of all, to create the most favorable conditions for preserving and increasing personal capital.

Thus, the objective development of productive forces in the course of the progress of capitalist relations forms the highest qualitative level of the corresponding social formation - oligarchic with its leading social group subject. The absence of an oligarchy indicates either complete exclusion private form ownership of the means of production from social life, or about the underdevelopment (possibly artificial social-democratic restraint) of capitalism.

Oligarchy is the highest stratum of capitalists, objectively born of a personal form of strategic capital based on its basic properties in the process of economic competition, as well as in terms of the most important systemic characteristic - centralization.

A similar procedural logic took place, by the way, in other private property formations - slave ownership and feudalism. But hidden and less intense. The fundamental difference between capitalism lies in the final break with the tribal component of social history. Its high stage completely “cleanses” the economy of external elements, in particular of an ethnic nature, filling the concept of class with exclusively economic content of the system of production relations, which determines and governs all sociality.

Oligarchic formation under capitalism is natural in the property and method of existence of any social system - its centralization, which is expressed in the subjective concentration of all necessary social resources, giving the opportunity and right of monopoly socio-political construction and management. Today, this law already constitutes geopolitics, determining the quality of the entire global social space. The modern process of globalization, based on the expansion and concentration of world private capital and the desire of the world oligarchy to concentrate the corresponding political resources, is the highest type of objective process of centralization in the conditions of the capitalist formation.

However, one more thing, no less important property and the vital way of existence of systemic sociality - dynamism with its inevitable qualitative changes, moves further social progress, without stopping history at the “liberal eternity” of oligarchic power.

The socialist revolution takes place at a critical moment when the content of capitalist relations of production does not correspond to the colossal level of progressive development of productive forces: “The bourgeoisie, in less than a hundred years of its class rule, has created more numerous and enormous productive forces than all previous generations combined... Modern bourgeois society with his... relations of production and exchange... already resembles a wizard who is no longer able to cope with the underground forces caused by his spells.” The formation of a socialist formation can be artificially slowed down for a while, but cannot be stopped forever.

Expressing historical necessity, socialist transformation takes place in conditions of growing class consciousness of the proletariat, thanks to the formation of ideology and scientific knowledge. It is this fundamental feature of modern society that distinguishes the socialist revolution from its earlier predecessors and riots, which mainly took place only with the catastrophic impoverishment of the working people and general pauperization.

Today, knowledge is capable of “not only explaining the world, but also changing it,” creating a “critical mass” of understanding of alienation and the need for systemic social change.

The entire economic-political logic and its framework in the form of a link between capital - profit - power under socialism acquires a different, qualitatively new owner as ownership of the means of production is nationalized and all capital passes into public ownership and disposal.

Nationalization of capital is the neutralization of antagonistic differences in the system of production relations, the elimination of classes and exploitation. If, under the capitalist method of reproduction, the profit of the capitalist and the wages of hired labor are economic factors of inverse relationship, then under socialism and the national form of ownership, wages are an integral part of profit, to the distribution of which all workers are involved; in these economic conditions, profit and wages are related by a direct function. This approach also removes the most important production mechanism of alienation - the antagonistic division of capital and labor, returning social priorities to the latter.

Thus, objective social progress makes the capitalist, a once significant and primary subject of social relations who played a huge positive role in the organization of production and general social centralization, a “superfluous” person, a pitiful anachronism standing in the way of the further course of social history. It is the perception of this fact by the public consciousness that is a consequence of the formation of ideology and scientific character of social and humanitarian knowledge.