The socio-economic formation

K. Marx was the first to define the notion of a socio-economic formation. It is based on a materialistic understanding of history. The development of human society is seen as an unchanging and regular process of changing formations. At the same time, there are only five of them. The basis of each of them is a certain mode of production. Public relations arising in the process of production and during the distribution of material goods, their exchange and consumption, form an economic basis, which in turn determines the legal and political superstructure, the structure of society, the forms of social consciousness, everyday life, family, and so on.

The emergence and development of formations is carried out according to special economic laws, which operate until the transition to the next stage of development. One of them is the law of the correspondence of the relations of production to the level and character of the development of the productive forces. Any formation in its development goes through certain stages. At the latter, there is a conflict between productive forces and production relations, and there is a need to change the old mode of production to a new one, and as a result, one formation, more progressive, replaces another.

So what is a socio-economic formation?

This is a historically formed type of society, in the basis of its development there is a certain mode of production. Any formation is a certain specific stage of human society.

What socio-economic formations stand out as supporters of this theory of development of the state and society?

Historically, the first formation is primitive communal. The type of production was determined by the existing relations in the tribal community, the distribution of labor among its members.

As a result of the development of economic relations between peoples, a slave-owning socio-economic formation emerges. The scale of communication is expanding. There are such concepts as civilization and barbarism. For this period, there are many wars, in which military extraction and tribute were seized as a surplus product, and a free labor force appeared in the form of slaves.

The third stage of development is the emergence of the feudal formation. At this time there were mass resettlements to new peasant lands, constant wars for the subjects and land between the feudal lords. The integrity of economic units was to be ensured by military force, and the role of the feudal lord was to preserve their inviolability. War became one of the conditions of production.

Supporters of the formational approach singled out the capitalist formation as the fourth stage of development of the state and society. This is the last stage, which is based on the exploitation of people. There is a development of means of production, there are factories and factories. The role of the international market is growing.

The last socio-economic formation is communist, which in its development passes through socialism and communism. At the same time, two types of socialism are distinguished: they are built mostly and developed.

The theory of socio-economic formations arose in connection with the need to scientifically substantiate the steady movement of all countries of the world to communism, the inevitability of the transition to this formation from capitalism.

Formational theory has a number of shortcomings. So, it takes into account only the economic factor of development of states, which is of great importance, but is not fully determinative. In addition, the opponents of the theory point out that in none of the countries does the socio-economic formation exist in its pure form.