The social structure of capitalist society briefly. Social evolution and development of capitalism. Development of capitalism in individual countries
Under capitalism, they act both as capitalists and as workers, and therefore do not correspond to the trend of separation of capital and labor. It turns out that “these are producers whose production is not subordinated to the capitalist mode of production”.
But the matter is not so simple, notes K. Marx. After all “The independent peasant or artisan is subject to bifurcation. As the owner of the means of production he is a capitalist, as a worker he is his own wage-labourer. He, therefore, as a capitalist, pays himself wages and extracts profit from his capital, that is, he exploits himself as a wage worker and, in the form of surplus value, pays himself the tribute that labor is forced to give to capital.” .
In other words, says K. Marx, in this independent, independent peasant or trader, the most important relationship between capital and labor inherent in capitalism is again naturally manifested. “And therefore, separation is placed at the basis as a definite relationship, even where different functions are combined in one person.” .
This is what Marxist dialectics means! In the outwardly seemingly independent peasant or artisan, the functions of capitalist and worker were combined in one person, and the inexorable pattern of separation of capital and worker in capitalist society also manifested itself.
The inconsistency inherent in such a petty bourgeois also determines certain trends in its development under capitalism. “It is a law that in the process of economic development these functions are divided among different persons and that the artisan - or peasant - producing with his own means of production, either little by little turns into a small capitalist, already exploiting the labor of others, or is deprived of his means production (most often the latter happens...) and turns into a hired worker" .
When the petty bourgeoisie of town and countryside splits into capitalists and workers, the majority of them fall into the ranks of the proletariat and only a minority into the ranks of the capitalists of town and countryside.
The division of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat does not at all mean that it should completely disappear with the development of capitalism. Capitalism itself, to a certain extent, requires small-scale production, and it itself gives rise to the combination of the functions of capitalist and worker in one person. Part of the bourgeoisie of the city and countryside is born precisely from small-scale production. At the same time, the bankrupt capitalists fall into the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie of the city and countryside, and they, in turn, join the proletariat. And vice versa, with the development of capitalism, some workers become petty bourgeois artisans, workshop owners, etc. A complex dialectical process takes place here, which continues throughout the entire period of capitalist development. AND “It would be a deep mistake to think that a “complete” proletarianization of the majority of the population is necessary...» .
The petty bourgeoisie, which embodies the middle, transitional type of owner-worker between capital and labor, constitutes the first large part of the middle strata of capitalist society. It is a middle, intermediate layer (precisely from the point of view of the capitalist mode of production) because, on the one hand, the representative of this layer is not only a capitalist or only a hired worker, but both a capitalist and a worker in one person.
A petty bourgeois is an owner of the means of production who is himself directly connected to them, works with their help, and whose source of income is entirely or mainly his independent labor. The petty bourgeois combines the features of the capitalist class and the working class, and is in the gap between them.
The petty bourgeoisie under capitalism represents social class, since it is characterized by a very specific attitude towards the means of production, different from the attitude of capitalists and the working class towards them.
V.I. Lenin wrote that classes in general (and not just the main ones) “in a capitalist and semi-capitalist society we know only three: the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie (the peasantry as its main representative) and the proletariat”. He spoke about the presence in Russia “the class of our petty bourgeoisie, small traders, small artisans, etc. - this class, which everywhere in Western Europe played its role in the democratic movement...” .
The petty bourgeoisie is characterized by the entire set of basic and derivative class characteristics. At the same time, the petty bourgeoisie is a non-main, intermediate, middle class of capitalist society.
According to its internal composition, the petty bourgeoisie is divided into groups depending on in what specific way and under what conditions it combines the functions of capitalist and worker. It depends on whether the petty bourgeoisie is in a city or a village, how he is connected with industry, specifically with capital and specifically with labor, and so on.
The main social division of the petty bourgeoisie class is the urban petty bourgeoisie and the rural petty bourgeoisie. This division also reveals the degree of connection of different groups of petty bourgeois with industry, with different forms of capital, means of production, with different forms of labor (industrial, agricultural, commercial, etc.).
The urban petty bourgeoisie consists primarily of commodity producers in the industrial field - artisans and handicraftsmen, owners of small workshops and small entrepreneurs working independently or with the involvement of approximately one to four to five workers. All these persons live more on the value they themselves create than on the surplus value extracted from the labor of hired workers.
Further, these are small traders and shopkeepers who work in their establishments only with family members or at the same time using about 1-3 employees, as well as owners of small enterprises in the service sector (hairdressers, eateries, etc.).
It is known that traders are not producers and their income is only part of the surplus value created in the sphere of production, which they appropriate in the form of trade profits. The difference between a small trader and a medium and large trader is that he does not live off the exploitation of other people’s labor like a capitalist trader. The capitalist merchant appropriates a portion of all social surplus value thanks to the labor of his employees, while the small merchant receives it primarily through his own labor.
Finally, small rentiers should also be included in the urban petty bourgeoisie. Small rentiers are mainly former artisans and small traders who, having accumulated small capital and savings through their own labor, entrust them to the state or private entrepreneurs and live off the interest from them. Small rentiers are constantly going bankrupt under the influence of crises and inflation, and now their number in capitalist countries is very, very small. Even in France, that classic country of rentiers, their numbers are very small.
In general, the so-called urban petty bourgeoisie, that is, artisans, small traders, differs from the bourgeoisie in that it does not exploit the labor of others; at the same time, unlike workers, she is the owner of some tools of labor. This explains the dual nature of this category and the intermediate economic position it occupies.
The rural petty bourgeoisie also includes the above groups of artisans and handicraftsmen, traders and shopkeepers, owners of small enterprises in the service sector, rentiers, but its main, dominant mass is the petty bourgeoisie in agriculture, including small and medium-sized peasants in capitalist countries with rural type of agriculture, small and medium-sized farmers in countries with farming type of farming. These are the owners of small and medium-sized plots of land and a few agricultural implements of production, living entirely (small peasants and farmers) or mainly (medium peasants and farmers) from independent labor.
In the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, the term “peasantry” is used in different meanings, at least in four:
1) The peasantry as a collective concept of a class that passed over from feudal society. In this case, it includes all layers of the peasantry, starting with the agricultural proletariat and ending with the large peasantry (rural bourgeoisie, kulaks).
2) The working and exploited peasantry. It includes the agricultural proletariat, semi-proletarians or small-scale peasants and small peasants who do not resort to hiring labor.
3) The concept of the working peasantry includes, in addition to the above three categories, middle peasants. Labor farmers refer to small and medium-sized farmers.
4) The peasantry as a petty bourgeoisie, i.e. as that fairly clear social group that has been transformed by capitalism and develops on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, is a collection of small agricultural producers who are both land owners and workers, who live entirely or mainly for account of your labor. It includes small and medium-sized peasants and farmers. It is in this sense that we are talking about the peasantry under capitalism.
In general, the internal composition of the intermediate class of the petty bourgeoisie is as follows:
Intellectuals and employees
An even more complex dialectic lies in the class position of the intelligentsia and office workers - this other large part of the middle strata of capitalist society, different from the petty bourgeoisie.
An intellectual and an employee is not an owner-worker, like the petty bourgeois. (With those exceptions when an intellectual, for example a doctor, also has certain means of labor that make him, like a petty bourgeois, an independent worker, an independent professional.) This is precisely a worker, a worker, and in the overwhelming majority - a hired worker.
Where is his place in the class structure of capitalist society? Is it composed of labor, wage workers, the proletariat? Is it part of capital, the bourgeoisie? Or between these two poles, in the middle, in the gap between capital and labor, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat? If so, why?
Let us recall that labor in itself is not at all a sufficient criterion for classifying a person as a worker. “There are no workers at all, or no workers at all...” “...The concept of “producer” unites the proletarian with the semi-proletarian and with the small commodity producer, thus departing... from the basic requirement to accurately distinguish between classes”. It is not only the proletarian, semi-proletarian and petty bourgeois who work. Some capitalists, engaged in mental and managerial work, also carry out certain activities. Therefore, one should treat with great caution the now popular term “workers”, which in its meaning is even much broader than the concept of “producer” criticized by Lenin. The concept of “workers” includes all hired workers in general (i.e., both employees and the intelligentsia), and even the petty and even middle bourgeoisie, which also works—itself participates in production and/or manages it.
The main requirement, the main criterion of class differences, emphasized V.I. Lenin, is not labor, not the division of labor, but attitude towards the means of production, the form of ownership with which the worker is associated. But these property relations, relations to the means of production, again must not be taken in isolation, not in isolation from the social division of labor. Unity of property relations (as the main ones) with the social division of labor- this is the Marxist-Leninist methodological principle of identifying classes within the class structure of capitalist society.
At the same time, it is important to remember that both questions of property and questions of labor are considered in Marxism not in general, not abstractly, but strictly specific.
There is no labor at all and no property at all. There is physical and mental labor, executive and organizational (managerial), free and unfree, creative and non-creative, etc. In the same way, there is no property at all and no property at all.
The Marxist criterion of attitude towards the means of production is not at all limited to the monosyllabic answer “whether this or that group of people owns” or “does not own” the means of production. The very “ownership” and “non-ownership” of the means of production is different for different groups of people, for example, “ownership” among capitalists and the petty bourgeoisie, “non-ownership” among the proletarians and technical intelligentsia, among workers and government, commercial and clerical employees.
It was in this unity of specific relations of property and social division of labor that the founders of Marxism-Leninism considered social groups. Proletarians, K. Marx pointed out, are not just working people, and not only persons deprived of ownership of the means of production. This is at the same time labor, as something that excludes property. In turn, capitalists are not just owners of the means of production. This is capital as something that excludes labor.
By the relationship between specific elements of property and labor, by the nature of the very connection between these two moments - property relations and the social division of labor - K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin determined the place of the intelligentsia and employees in the social structure of capitalism.
The concepts of “intelligentsia” and “employees” in themselves are not clear class categories, since they characterize people not from a strictly class position (ultimately in relation to the means of production), but from other points of view, and different ones.
The concept of “intelligentsia” characterizes people from the point of view the nature of their work. These are workers of mental, intellectual labor, such educated representatives of the population, whose “capital” is their mind, mental abilities and who work and live due to the work of their head, intellect (engineering and technical workers, teachers, doctors, artists, etc.). d.).
The concept of “employees” refers to persons who have undertaken to serve the state or a private entrepreneur for a certain salary. Unlike intellectuals, they are often called “salaried workers” (in English - salaried workers, salaried employees), as well as “nonmanual workers”, “white-collar workers” ), or simply “white-collar” (white-collars).
Generally speaking, one and the same person can be both an intellectual and an employee, for example a doctor or a teacher in public service. Many employees in a capitalist society are intellectuals by the nature of their work, and most intellectuals are included in the ranks of employees by their position in relation to the state or private entrepreneur.
In this sense, the category of employees is much broader than the category of intellectuals: the latter constitutes only part of the stratum of employees in capitalist society (although a certain proportion of intellectuals are not employees). Owners of the means of production and capitalists can also be intellectuals and senior officials when they become managers, lawyers, journalists or occupy certain positions in the state apparatus. This, however, does not make them cease to be capitalists by their class nature.
Regarding employees and intellectuals, the founders of Marxism-Leninism pointed to three main features that distinguish them in class from the bourgeoisie and proletariat in capitalist society, placing them in a middle, intermediate position in the class structure of capitalism.
The first main feature concerns the specific nature of the attitude of intellectuals and employees to capitalist property, the specific form of their connection with private property.
The attitude of the worker, the proletarian, to private property is such that his labor at the same time excludes all property, and therefore the possibility of using this property, receiving benefits and privileges from it, and therefore serving and serving it. Although here, as we have seen, this opposition of “labor excluding property” is not absolute. The top workers find themselves in a position where they are fed at the expense of capital, receive crumbs from the table of the bourgeois magnates, and therefore they also receive something from the capitalist surplus value acquired through exploitation.
If the mutual exclusivity of labor and capital turns out to be not absolute even among some of the workers (although among the overwhelming majority of the proletariat it is fully manifested), then among employees and the intelligentsia there is usually no such mutual exclusivity of labor and private property - due to the peculiarities of their class position.
The proletariat as a direct producer, as a worker engaged in productive labor, pays for itself, for he himself reproduces the value of his own labor power (and at the same time produces surplus value for the capitalist). The worker exchanges his labor for the variable part of capital, that is, for that part of it which, in the form of wages, returns to him as the value of his labor power. The capitalist receives the rest - surplus value, profit. These two parts: wages and profit (with its internal divisions) are the only thing that is created by productive labor and through which one can live in a capitalist society. According to K. Marx, “In general there are only two starting points: the capitalist and the worker. Third parties of all classes either must receive money from these two classes for some services, or, since they receive money without providing any services, they are co-owners of surplus value in the form of rent, interest, etc..
The class peculiarity of a very significant part of the employees (primarily those not engaged in actual mental work) is that they does not pay itself, as workers, but receives payment either from the owner of the profit, i.e., from the capitalist, or exchanges his labor for part of the wages available to the proletarians. This is due to the fact that this largest part of employees is busy unproductive labor, i.e. one that does not reproduce their labor power and does not produce surplus value - in general, capital.
In a capitalist society, K. Marx classified government officials, military personnel, clergy, judges, lawyers, etc. as unproductive workers living on income. This is a very significant part of employees and intelligentsia. These unproductive workers “can only be paid from the wages of productive workers or from the profits of their employers (and co-participants in the division of these profits)”. Their work “is exchanged not for capital, but directly on income, that is, on wages or profits (and also, of course, on those various headings that exist at the expense of the capitalist’s profits, such as interest and rent).”.
This does not mean, of course, that all such employees receive money for nothing. No, they receive income for their labor, but this labor seems unproductive from point of view capitalist production. “These unproductive workers,” continues K. Marx, “do not receive their share of income (wages and profits) free of charge, their share in the goods created by productive labor - they must buy it - but they have no involvement in the production of these goods relationship" .
This fact that unproductive workers “must buy” their share of income, and buy it primarily from the owners of profit, capitalist property, plays a very significant role. Capitalism turns white-collar workers and many other knowledge workers into direct employees. But these are hired workers, as it were special kind, different from hired proletarian workers. The proletarian, through productive labor, earns “his share” of all the income he creates, without which the capitalist will not receive “his” share. The unproductive worker does not take his “due” share of income, like a worker, but buys it from the proletarian or capitalist, mainly from the latter, providing him with some services, and thereby becomes dependent on the capitalist, serving him.
A government official, an office worker, a military man, a lawyer, a judge, an ideological worker, etc., receive their share of income in the form of a salary or directly from the owner of an enterprise, a bank, or from the bourgeois state controlled by the same capital.
In other words, the mass of employees receives payment for their hired labor directly or indirectly from the capitalists, and from here this mass of employees turns out to be tied to private property interests, placed in the service of this property.
If the labor of the proletarian excludes private property (the proletarian is in no way connected with it, is not interested in its development), then the labor of the hired employee, paid for by capital, thereby turns out to be in a certain way connected with private property, presupposing it, depending on it, and therefore serving in to a certain extent to her interests.
This specific relation of the labor of the mass of employees to capitalist private property objectively develops despite the fact that the capitalist profit itself, from which they receive income in exchange for their labor and on which they thereby depend, is created by the same workers, proletarians. “...All productive workers, firstly, provide the means to pay unproductive workers, and secondly, deliver products consumed by those who doesn't do any work» ; “...productive workers create the material basis for the subsistence of unproductive workers and, consequently, for the existence of these latter”, wrote K. Marx. This is the paradox, the internal contradiction of the capitalist mode of production and distribution: employees depend not on who produced for them, but on who they receive from. This same inconsistency also contains the possibility that the combination of the labor of employees with private property (profit), from which they receive their income, will be replaced to an increasing extent by the combination of the labor of employees with the labor of proletarians.
A special social relationship, a special form of social connection with private property, also exists among that part of the intelligentsia and employees who are employed productive labor in the material or spiritual realm.
This is typical, on the one hand, for those mental workers who are engaged in the sphere of spiritual production. Capitalism inexorably turns these figures into its hired workers. “The bourgeoisie deprived of the sacred aura all kinds of activities that until then were considered honorable and looked upon with reverent awe, wrote K. Marx and F. Engels in the “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” She turned a doctor, a lawyer, a priest, a poet, a man of science into her paid employees.”. Their labor is largely productive in nature, but this labor is of a special kind; it is not adequate to the productive labor of proletarians in the material field. “In spiritual production, another type of labor acts as productive”, wrote K. Marx. The peculiarity of spiritual production, paid for by capital in its own private interests, makes these intellectual workers materially dependent on capital, on private property. V.I. Lenin wrote that “educated people, in general, the “intelligentsia” cannot help but rebel against the wild police oppression of absolutism, which persecutes thought and knowledge, but the material interests of this intelligentsia tie it to absolutism, to the bourgeoisie, force it to be inconsistent, to make compromises, to sell its revolutionary and oppositional fervor for a government salary or for participation in profits or dividends".
Here, V.I. Lenin’s instruction about the dependence of the material interests of the intelligentsia, mental workers on the bourgeoisie, is very important, that part of the intelligentsia participates in the profits or dividends received by the bourgeoisie. This again follows from the fact that although the labor of many intellectuals is productive, it is productive in a different way than the labor of the proletarians, and therefore the share of income received by these intellectuals depends primarily on the capitalist class, the owners of property, and thereby these groups of intelligentsia find themselves tied indirectly to private property.
An even more obvious attachment to private property, dependence on it, is manifested among productive mental workers employed in material production.
According to K. Marx, among the productive workers “belong, of course, to all those who in one way or another participate in the production of goods, starting with the worker in the proper sense of the word and ending with the director, engineer (as opposed to the capitalist)”. The overseer, the engineer, the clerk, the manager - all these are hired workers engaged in productive labor, but nevertheless their attitude towards private capitalist property is completely different from that of the workers.
K. Marx emphasized that the work of engineering and technical workers in management and supervision has a dual nature. This - “productive labor, which must be performed in any combined method of production.” At the same time, it performs “specific functions arising from the opposition between the government and the masses of the people.”. In this part “the labor of supervision and management... arises from the antagonistic character of society...” .
Hence, the work of engineering and technical personnel is paid differently. Part of capitalist profit “comes in the form of maintaining a manager in those types of enterprises, the size, etc. of which allows such a significant division of labor that it is possible to establish a special salary for the manager”. This is a very important remark by K. Marx. It turns out, K. Marx concludes, that “the hired worker is forced to pay his own wages and, in addition, payment for supervision, compensation for the work of managing and supervising him...” .
And this shows how different the concrete attitude to property, to capital is between the worker and the technical intellectual and manager. The worker is a hired worker, and he is completely fenced off from private property, he does not receive anything from it; on the contrary, the capitalists take away from him the surplus value he created. An engineer, manager, supervisor is also a hired worker, but for performing his “specific function” of management he receives from the capitalist a “special wage” in the form of a part of capitalist profit; Although the manager receives this part of the wages from the capitalist, he actually takes it from the worker who made this “supervision payment” itself.
This is the specific and very significant difference in the connection between the labor of the worker, the proletarian, and the labor of the intellectual, the manager, with private capitalist property, with capital.
K. Marx, analyzing trends in the development of engineering, technical, and managerial personnel, noted that with the development of capitalism, payment for supervision with the emergence of numerous industrial and commercial managers “was lowered, like any payment for skilled labor, as general development lowered the costs of producing specially trained labor”. This is an extremely accurately noted and explained by K. Marx trend of lowering the wages of engineering, technical, and managerial personnel, bringing them closer to the wages of just an employee, just a hired worker.
An analysis of the relationship between capital and labor, made by Soviet economists in the middle of the 20th century, showed that already average managers (industrial officers) - directors of manufacturing enterprises, as a rule, have a salary that includes payment for both their necessary labor and surplus labor. This puts such managers not only formally (in terms of standard of living), but also essentially on the same footing as the middle bourgeoisie.
As for the top managers, their colossal remunerations do not fit into any reasonable criteria of “payment for a certain kind of skillful work” and consist largely, and sometimes the overwhelming majority, of surplus value created by others (along with payment for their actual management labor).
A couple of very recent and more than illustrative examples:
On September 23, 2014, in the State Duma, deputy V.F. Rashkin publicly announced the salaries of top management of leading Russian state-owned companies:
- I. Sechin’s salary at Rosneft is 4.5 million rubles per day,
- A. Miller’s salary at Gazprom is 2.2 million rubles per day,
- V. Yakunin’s salary in the Russian Railways company is 1.3 million rubles per day.
Modest, isn't it?
And here is another example - the Russian court just recently recognized as legal the crazy dismissal payments to the ex-president of Rostelecom A. Provotorov (the so-called “golden parachute”), amounting to more than 200 million rubles. Although even the company's shareholders were outraged by such colossal figures.
So, the main features of the class position of employees and the intelligentsia, distinguishing them from the working class, are:
The first main feature is employees and the intelligentsia, in contrast to the working class, which is directly opposed to capital, are in a certain dependence on private property, receiving from the capitalist (or through him) either the means of subsistence in the form of income, or directly a part of capitalist profit, an increased, “special wage payment" - in other words, they find themselves in the social position of those interested in private property, oriented towards it, connecting themselves with it, serving capital. To the extent that employees and intellectuals, in the course of capitalist development, weaken and break these ties and dependence on private property and capital, they move to the position of hired workers of the proletarian type.
Second main feature The social position of the stratum of employees and intelligentsia, which distinguishes it from the working class, no longer lies in the area of property, but in the area of labor. It lies in the fact that intellectuals and employees are socially assigned to a completely different type of labor than workers, namely, non-physical, mental labor, while the proletariat, the working class, is socially assigned primarily to physical labor.
While labor is individual, K. Marx noted, it combines the following functions: mental and physical, managerial and executive labor. Subsequently, they are separated and reach a hostile opposite. “The separation of the intellectual forces of the production process from physical labor and their transformation into the power of capital over labor reaches its completion, as already indicated earlier, in large-scale industry built on the basis of machines.” .
So, under capitalism, mental labor is socially separated from the working class and turns into the power of capital over labor, confronting the workers as an alien and dominant force over them. The division of mental and physical labor acts as the social opposite of mental and physical labor.
As a result, the following situation arises: firstly, the worker and the intellectual, the employee, each individually relate to capital as an employee; secondly, they are classally separated from each other, opposed to each other, representing mental or physical labor; thirdly, all this does not prevent them from being in the production process (and not in the social sphere) members of the same production collective - and in this specific sense (only in this, and not in the sense of their class identity, as is often interpreted) - total workers.
In the field of labor and in the social field, mental labor turns out to be opposed to the physical labor of workers, although intellectuals and workers work together (“total worker”) and each individual is a hired worker. But socially, the physical labor of the proletariat turns out to be subordinated to capital, both directly and through the mental labor of the intelligentsia used by the latter. In that root class opposition of mental and physical labor and this determines the fact that even engineering and technical personnel who manage machines, and not people, act as “a higher, partly scientifically educated” layer, “standing outside the circle of factory workers, simply attached to it”.
The working class under capitalism is opposed by class not only intellectually, but also by the whole non-physical labor- that is, the labor of both the intelligentsia (actually mental) and employees (of an unproductive nature). “...The division of labor turns unproductive labor into the exclusive function of one part of the workers, and productive labor into the exclusive function of another part” .
It is clear that this separation, conditioned by the capitalist mode of production, of non-physical labor from physical labor, leading to significant class differences between employees and the intelligentsia, on the one hand, and the working class, on the other, can be weakened and eroded as the physical labor of the proletariat for economic reasons (capitalism does not create and does not seek to create social conditions for this) it is filled with elements of mental labor.
Third main feature, which characterizes the class position of the intelligentsia and employees as different from the class position of the working class, is that a significant part of the intelligentsia and employees are socially assigned to managerial (organizational) work, while the entire proletariat is socially attached to performing labor.
As K. Marx noted, the work of supervision and management necessarily arises wherever the direct production process takes the form of a socially combined process. Managerial work acts as a specific type of mental work, as mental work associated with management, with managerial activities.
Like mental work, managerial work “comes” from the owner of the property (in any antagonistic formation), in the sense that if at first mental and managerial work was the privilege of the exploiters, then it is transferred to a special social category of mental workers, managerial workers. The capitalist first frees himself from physical labor and then transfers “the functions of direct and constant supervision over individual workers and groups of workers of a special category of employees.
Just as an army needs its officers and non-commissioned officers, in the same way the mass of workers, united by joint labor under the command of the same capital, needs industrial officers (managers,managers) and non-commissioned officers (supervisors,foremen, observers, contre— maitres), who dispose during the labor process on behalf of capital. The work of supervision is established as their exclusive function.” .
Managerial work is carried out on behalf of capital and, moreover, has a dual nature, is paid with a special salary, including a part of capitalist profit. For all these reasons, the managerial work of part of the intelligentsia and employees opposes class the performing labor of the working class, thereby distinguishing the intelligentsia and office workers from the proletariat as a class.
The noted three main features of the class position of the intelligentsia and employees characterize in unity their specific attitude to private capitalist property and their specific place in the social division of labor. This is what makes this social stratum of wage earners and workers significantly different in class from both the working class and the bourgeois class. For all its attachment to capital in matters of property and the nature of the work performed, for all aspects of receiving increased wages or part of the profit from capital, the stratum of the intelligentsia and employees remains a collection of hired workers, deprived of their own means of social production.
Because of this, K. Marx, F. Engels and V.I. Lenin classified employees and the intelligentsia as intermediate social stratum (interclass stratum), located in the class structure of capitalism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Speaking about the development of employees under capitalism, or persons engaged in unproductive labor and living on income, K. Marx reproached D. Ricardo: “What he forgets to note is the constant increase in the middle classes, standing in the middle between the workers, on the one hand, and the capitalists and landowners, on the other; the middle classes, which in an ever-increasing volume feed for the most part directly from income, are burdened with a heavy burden. burden on the workers who form the basis of society, and increase the social stability and strength of the top ten thousand.". V.I. Lenin conventionally classified the intelligentsia, the middle class, and the petty bourgeoisie into one social group.
At the same time, V.I. Lenin pointed out a significant difference between the two parts of the middle strata of capitalist society, namely, that the petty bourgeoisie actually represents old part middle strata, and the intelligentsia and office workers - her new part, born precisely from a more developed stage of capitalism. According to him, “in all European countries, including Russia, the “oppression” and decline of the petty bourgeoisie is steadily advancing... And along with this “oppression” of the petty bourgeoisie in agriculture and industry there is the birth and development of a “new middle class,” as the Germans say , a new layer of the petty bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, for whom it is also becoming increasingly difficult to live in a capitalist society and who, for the most part, look at this society from the point of view of the small producer» .
In terms of its internal composition, the layer of intellectuals and employees is characterized by the fact that it is not socially homogeneous, contradictory, and actually consists of socially different and opposing layers adjacent to different classes of capitalist society.
Since there are three such classes in capitalist society (bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat), the main division between the intelligentsia and employees, from the point of view of its attachment, attachment to different classes, is a division into three parts, into three layers: two decisive, main - the bourgeois intelligentsia and the proletarian intelligentsia, and the third, the wavering, transitional one - the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.
Here it is necessary to take into account that the petty bourgeois class itself is intermediate, middle in capitalist society, that it is constantly being eroded into a part that is included in the bourgeoisie and a part that is included in the proletariat. Hence, that part of the intelligentsia and employees that adjoins the class of the petty bourgeoisie, like the petty bourgeoisie, tends to be increasingly divided into those who will join the bourgeois intelligentsia and employees, and those who will join the proletarian intelligentsia and employees, although this does not naturally mean that this entire third, wavering part of the intelligentsia and employees should disappear altogether, be washed away.
V.I. Lenin, referring to the intelligentsia and employees in pre-revolutionary Russia, wrote that “the composition of the “intelligentsia” is outlined as clearly as the composition of society engaged in the production of material values: if in the latter the capitalist reigns and rules, then in the former the increasingly faster and faster growing horde of careerists and mercenaries of the bourgeoisie sets the tone - the “intelligentsia” is satisfied and calm, alien to any nonsense and knowing well what she wants... naive claims to shame bourgeois intelligentsia for its bourgeoisness... are ridiculous... Beyond these limits begins the liberal and radical "intelligentsia"..." Then follows the "socialist intelligentsia" adjacent to the proletariat .
We can identify five main features that determine and reveal the attachment and attachment of parts of the intelligentsia and employees to certain classes.
Firstly, material attachment, expressed in the receipt by employees of a portion of capitalist profits, a special “additional payment” for managerial work, increased wages, various privileges, or the absence of such material attachment. Such privileges, for example, for office and sales employees under capitalism include, for example, enrollment in the “staff”, the opportunity to dine in another canteen and receive a salary, not wages (even if the salary is lower than wages), the opportunity to come going to work later, fostering snobbery and caste prejudices, etc. .
Secondly, attachment by the nature of the work performed (labor attachment), when a specific type of mental, non-physical, managerial labor is more attached, closer to the activities of the bourgeoisie, proletariat or petty bourgeoisie.
Third, everyday attachment, attachment based on living conditions, connecting the standard of living and lifestyle of parts of the intelligentsia and employees with certain classes.
Fourthly, attachment by origin, which leaves its mark on groups of intellectuals and employees depending on whether they came from the propertied classes, from the proletariat or the petty bourgeoisie.
Fifthly, ideological and political attachment, expressing the connection between groups of intellectuals and employees with classes according to their views, political orientation, political position and actions, participation in the struggle on the side of certain classes.
Along with the division into social strata according to attachment, attachment to certain classes, the intelligentsia and employees are divided into social strata and groups depending on their place in the social division of labor.
All intellectuals and employees are workers non-physical labor(or service labor) and this socially distinguishes them from workers. At the same time, some of them are workers of mental labor itself, and some are workers of specific non-physical labor (which has not yet become mental, intellectual in the precise sense of the word), service labor.
Therefore, if we characterize intellectuals and employees using common criteria, and not different ones, namely, by the nature of work, then in this case intelligentsia unites knowledge workers, employees - workers in specific non-physical labor, service labor.
Among the mental workers - the intelligentsia - there is a managerial intelligentsia, who is assisted by managerial employees who themselves are not engaged in actual mental work and managerial work, but who help with their work in serving managerial workers. Collectively, the management intelligentsia and management employees constitute administrative and management personnel, layer officials, bureaucracy. V.I. Lenin spoke about the concept “bureaucracy, bureaucracy, as a special layer of persons specializing in management...”
Finally, the intelligentsia and employees are divided into urban and rural intelligentsia and employees. Belonging to a city or village leaves a socio-economic imprint on different parts of the civil servants and intelligentsia.
In general, the composition of the intelligentsia and employees is as follows.
This division of the intelligentsia and employees into social strata is not final. Within mental work, service work and managerial work there are their own divisions. Moreover, these are not just professional differences in employment. Just as different groups of workers employed in different fields of activity express different degrees of connection with industry, different groups of intellectuals and employees employed in different fields of activity express different degrees of connection with industry and, in general, with material and spiritual production.
Among the intelligentsia, mental workers, many of whom are also engaged in management activities, there are many such divisions and groups.
The technical and economic intelligentsia, representing a collection of intellectual workers - technical specialists, economists, statisticians, many of whom carry out managerial work. Its components are the engineering, technical and managerial intelligentsia in the economic field (managers). These groups include primarily those directors, managers, engineers, technicians and other technical specialists who carry out mental work in production, and also perform, to a large extent, management and leadership functions directly at enterprises. This includes, further, employees of the administrative apparatus of industry, financial and agricultural companies dealing with general issues of leadership, management and planning in the economic field. This also includes economists, planners, statisticians and similar workers with technical and economic education. In general, this is approximately the category of people that is now called technocracy, management and economic bureaucracy in bourgeois literature.
Persons of liberal professions - scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, writers, painters, musicians, etc. - are mental workers employed outside the sphere of material production and producing certain spiritual values. Some of them also perform management functions.
Managerial employees of the state apparatus (primarily officials) represent knowledge workers, managerial intelligentsia in the state field (political, economic, military, police and other management), and not in the field of private entrepreneurship. In practical work they are associated with civil servants.
Similar features of mental labor characterize workers of the ideological apparatus (newspapers, magazines, radio, television, etc.) associated with the bourgeois state, but for the most part not engaged in managerial activities.
The intelligentsia under capitalism also includes ministers of worship and the clergy.
The following groups are distinguished among employees and service workers:
Office workers in industry, banks and other institutions related to the economy, which are represented by accountants, cashiers and similar employees performing accounting and costing functions. They are not engaged in production, like workers, and do not produce surplus value, capital. Therefore, that part of the capital that goes to accountants, office workers, etc., is diverted from the production process and belongs to distribution costs, to deductions from total revenue.
Sales clerks- These are hired workers in trade, bringing profit to merchant capitalists. But they, like office workers, do not directly produce surplus value. Employees in trade and in banks are actually used by capitalists to appropriate and redistribute profits, and therefore directly identifying them with proletarians is not entirely correct.
There are also employees of transport, communications and utility companies. These are conductors, telephone operators, telegraph operators, watchmen and similar workers.
A significant group consists of civil servants- a huge mass of officials of the state civil apparatus, employees of the police, army, tax authorities, etc., working under the leadership of government officials and management workers. Their function is not mental labor as such, which creates value, but the performance of certain activities, the performance of certain duties (policeman, tax collector, etc.). Employees of the state apparatus and the army under capitalism, noted K. Marx, are among those workers “who themselves do not produce anything - neither in the field of spiritual nor in the field of material production - and only due to the shortcomings of the social structure turn out to be useful and necessary, owing their existence to the presence of social evils” .
These are those specific categories of persons, united by the concepts of the intelligentsia and employees, who, due to their specific position in the system of material relations and social division of labor, occupy an intermediate position between the bourgeoisie and the working class.
About the concept of “middle class”
From the analysis performed, it is clear that the concept of the middle social strata of capitalist society, from a Marxist point of view, has a collective, generalizing meaning. The middle strata do not represent economically, socially and politically homogeneous whole as social classes. The groups included in them occupy different places in the system of material relations, and therefore are characterized by different places in the system of social division of labor, in the production process and in the sphere of distribution.
Each of the classes and layers included in the middle strata occupies a specific intermediate position in the class structure of capitalist society between its two poles. Because of this, Marxist science, recognizing the legitimacy of the collective concept of middle, or intermediate, strata in the analysis of the class structure of capitalist society, brings to the fore a specific analysis of the socio-economic situation and the resulting political role of each class and layer included in the middle strata.
Naturally, in class societies, with the change in two socially opposite poles, the composition of the middle strata that were in between them also changed. In a slave-owning society, an intermediate position between the main, opposite classes of slaves and slave owners was occupied by small owners living by their labor (artisans and peasants), the lumpen proletariat, formed from ruined artisans and peasants. Under feudalism, an intermediate position between the classes of feudal lords and peasants was occupied by the emerging layers of the industrial, financial and commercial bourgeoisie (guild masters, merchants, moneylenders, etc.), small artisans, apprentices and the urban poor - the core of the future proletariat, groups of employees and intelligentsia, not related by their social status to the main classes of feudal society. Under capitalism, the composition of the middle strata is determined by two main parts: the old part - the petty bourgeoisie class and the new part - the social stratum of the intelligentsia and office workers.
The middle social strata of capitalist society represent a complex network of social strata, different in nature and origin, where each stratum forms a single and relatively homogeneous group. Therefore, neither from an economic nor from a socio-political point of view is it possible to determine the intermediate position of the middle strata as a whole. There is no general economic basis for this. Each of these "classes" is "average" in its own sense, which is suitable only for it alone.
Because of this, the concept of middle strata should be used with great caution, since it is very ambiguous. As a result of its limitations, the concept of the middle strata never allows us to generally assess the position, role and prospects of this “intermediate” part of society; resting on different foundations, being in different social relations, the middle social strata are driven by different economic interests, which need to be studied in detail in order to understand their role in the social struggle. However, despite its ambiguity, the concept of the middle strata of capitalist society cannot be discarded, since underneath it lies a social fact whose existence is undeniable. It points to the presence of an “intermediate zone” in the class structure of capitalism and shows that not only the two great antagonists of our time take part in the class struggle.
The petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia with employees actually exhaust the composition of the middle strata of capitalist society, determined by the capitalist mode of production.
Material prepared by G.I. Gagina, 10.30.2014
Basic
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 slavery) took place on the basis of the emergence of several social components: the market, goods, a little later, money and social institutions - primarily 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.
For the first time in social history, the exploitative stage of human progress 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 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 of 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 oligarchy speaks either of the complete exclusion of private ownership of the means of production from social life, or of 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 to 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, another, no less important property and 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.
Mode of production
The sociological theory of capitalist society of Marx and Engels was developed most systematically and in detail in Capital and economic manuscripts of the 60s. Engels’s works “Anti-Dühring”, “Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy”, Engels’s cycle “Letters on Historical Materialism”, etc. are also of great importance. The creation of a mature form of Marxist theory of society became possible thanks to Marx's study of the capitalist economy. A number of theoretical constructs characteristic of the formative stage were removed by Marx (for example, the theory of alienated labor), but at the same time many important ideas of the works of the 40-50s. were saved by them
1 Marks K., Towards a critique of political economy. Preface // Op. T. 13. pp. 6-9.
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nena. Therefore, when presenting a mature form of Marxist theory of society, it is necessary to use the provisions (although not all) of the “German Ideology”, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, “Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1859” and other works. The closer the date of creation of the work is to the beginning of the creative activity of Marx and Engels, the more their ideas were taken into the mature form of their theory.
The essence of the materialist understanding of history is the position about the ontological primacy of social being and the secondary nature of social consciousness, about social being as determining and social consciousness as being determined. Social existence in its concreteness is revealed by Marx as a process of social labor (production).
In constructing the theory of capitalist society, Marx proceeds from the concept of labor as a developing process of interaction between society and nature: “Labor is, first of all, a process taking place between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, mediates, regulates and controls the exchange of substances between himself and nature " 1 . Through labor, a person, in accordance with his needs (real or imaginary), produces material (material) consumer goods. The labor process includes as simple moments: a) purposeful activity, or labor as such (labor in the narrow sense of the word, b) the object of labor and c) the means of labor. The subject of labor is natural objects and natural objects already mediated by labor, to which labor itself is directed: the earth with its subsoil, flora and fauna, water resources. “A means of labor is a thing or a complex of things that a person places between himself and the object of labor and which serves for him as a conductor of his influence on this object. He uses the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of things in order, in accordance with his purpose, to use them as instruments of influence on other things” 2. The creation of means of labor is a feature that distinguishes humans from animals: humans deeply and multi-stage transform natural materials, while animals have only a superficial impact on them, coinciding with their direct consumption. Means of labor, therefore, are machines, tools, various types of equipment used
1 Marx K., Capital. T. 1 // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 23. P. 168.
2 Ibid. P. 190.
History of sociology
As a conductor of human impact on nature. The means of labor also include the material conditions of production that play an auxiliary role in production - pipes, barrels, vessels, industrial buildings, roads, transport, etc. In general, means of labor (mechanical) are, as Marx believed, the most essential characteristic of the economy of any society: “Economic eras differ not in what is produced, but in how it is produced, with what means of labor” 1 .
The development of an automatic system of machines determines the formation of the social nature of production: the means of production are set in motion by an ever-increasing mass of members of society, i.e. increasingly collectively. Society is increasingly subject to the tendency to become a single factory, a single system of machines. In accordance with all this, the concentration and centralization of capital occurs: large capitals absorb small capitals, large capitalists expropriate small capitalists. A contradiction is formed between the social nature of the productive forces and the private form of their appropriation. This contradiction determines the increasingly dynamic development of the capitalist mode of production, not only increases social productive forces, but also determines the constant increase in the exploitation of workers, regular economic crises, the systematic destruction of productive forces, enormous waste of human labor, for which capital, with tireless ingenuity, creates more and more new ones. forms, which is a necessary prerequisite for its further development. The development of the capitalist mode of production increases the torment of labor. Marx writes: “... the accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time the accumulation of poverty, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, coarseness and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital” 2. Due to all this, both the necessity and the possibility of overcoming capitalist production relations, capitalist private property are created, i.e. implementation of the socialist revolution, establishing control of associated producers over social productive forces.
1 Marks K. Capital. T. 1 // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 23. S. 191.
2 Ibid. P. 660.
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Social class structure of society
The capitalist mode of production presupposes, according to Marx, as its moment the distribution of individuals into types of activity depending on their relationship to the means of production, i.e. gives rise to the social-class structure of society. The key concept of Marx's theory - the concept of class - did not, however, receive a direct and strict definition. But Marx's view of the social structure of bourgeois society can be reconstructed from the economic theory of Marxism. Marx understands classes as large social groups characterized by different attitudes towards the means of production (real control, ownership of them or the absence of such control, ownership) and to each other. Classes as social groups of private owners and non-owners act either as a subject or as an object of exploitation, respectively. It seems that the definition of classes given by V.I. Lenin in his work “The Great Initiative” quite adequately reproduces Marx’s position. This definition, as we know, reads: “Classes are large groups of people that differ in their place in a historically defined system of social production, in their relationship (mostly fixed and formalized in laws) to the means of production, in their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, according to the method of obtaining and the size of the share of social wealth that they have. Classes are groups of people from which one can appropriate the work of another, due to the difference in their place in a certain structure of the social economy” 1.
Marx identifies two main classes of bourgeois society - bourgeoisie And proletariat (hired workers), i.e. owners of capital and owners of labor. Marx, back in the “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” noted that capitalist society, unlike its predecessors, is predominantly class-based: “Our era, the era of the bourgeoisie, differs, however, in that it has simplified class contradictions: society is increasingly split into two large hostile camps, into two large classes facing each other - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat" 2. A prerequisite for the capitalist mode
1 Lenin V.I. Great initiative //Lenin V.I. Poly. collection op. T. 39. P. 15.
2 Marx K., Engels F. Manifesto of the Communist Party // Marks K.,
Engels F. Op. T. 4. P. 425.
276 History of sociology
production, constantly reproduced by itself (on an expanded scale), is the functioning of the means of production (past labor) in the form of capital and workers (living labor) in the form of the proletariat. The proletariat creates surplus value, and capital commands its labor. A proletarian, according to Marx, is an individual engaged in productive labor in the context of the capitalist mode of production. According to Marx, productive labor under the capitalist mode of production is labor that produces not just products, but, firstly, goods and, secondly, surplus value, capital. As Marx wrote, productive labor is exchanged for capital, not for income. In the latter case, we would be talking about the labor of artisans, persons of “free labor,” etc., who create goods, but not surplus value, not capital, and are not exploited. For example, the personal shoemaker of a capitalist who owns a shoe factory is an unproductive worker, unlike the proletarians who produce in this factory not only boots, but also surplus value, capital. Marx characterized the subjects of productive labor as follows: “The number of these productive workers includes, of course, all those who in one way or another participate in the production of goods, starting with the worker in the proper sense of the word and ending with the director, engineer (as opposed to the capitalist)” 1 . The proletariat thus includes proletarians of mental and physical labor. Marx speaks of the total worker, the total proletariat, the particles of which are proletarians who perform a variety of functions in the system of social division of labor. “Just as in their nature the head and hands belong to the same organism, so in the process of labor mental and physical labor are combined... The product generally transforms from the direct product of the individual producer into a social one, into the common product of the collective worker, i.e. combined working personnel, whose members are closer or further away from direct impact on the subject of labor. Therefore, the very cooperative nature of the labor process inevitably expands the concept of labor productivity and its bearer, the productive worker. Now, in order to work productively, there is no need to directly use your hands; it is enough to be an organ of the collective worker, to perform one of its
1 Marks K. Theories of surplus value // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T.26.Ch. 1.S. 138.
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subfunctions" 1. “A characteristic feature of the capitalist mode of production is precisely that it separates different types of labor from each other, and, therefore, also mental and physical labor, or those types of labor in which one or the other side predominates, and distributes them among different people. This, however, does not prevent the fact that the material product is joint product of labor these people, or that their joint labor is embodied in material wealth; on the other hand, this does not in the least interfere with this or does not change at all in the fact that the relation of each of these people individually to capital represents the relation to the capital of a hired worker and in this special sense - attitude of a productive worker. All these people are not only directly employed in the production of material wealth, but also exchange their labor directly for money as capital and therefore, in addition to reproducing their labor power, directly create surplus value for the capitalist. Their labor consists of paid labor plus unpaid surplus labor” 2. Thus, according to Marx, all workers - from laborers to designers and scientists, embodying all links of the production process leading to the creation of a mass of capitalist goods, are the total labor force, the total proletarian, who opposes the total capital and is exploited by it. In the class of the proletariat, Marx also included hired workers engaged in trade, or the commercial proletariat. This layer of the proletariat does not produce surplus value, but creates the conditions for its realization.
Marx viewed the proletarian class as an integral, but internally divided social group. The author of Capital divided the proletariat into spheres (industrial, agricultural, commercial, etc.) and sectors (metallurgists, weavers, miners, etc.), by types of labor activity (proletarians of physical and mental labor), and by skill level (proletarians of skilled or complex and unskilled or simple labor), by level of payment (highly paid and low-paid proletarians), etc.
Marx noted that the existence of the class of hired workers is contradictory: on the one hand, it is united by socialization -
1 Marks K. Capital. T. 1 // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 23. pp. 516-517.
2 Marks K. Marks K.,
Engels F. T. 48. P. 61.
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There is production and objective opposition to capital (this tendency dominates), but on the other hand, there is a counteracting tendency of competitive struggle between proletarians for more favorable conditions for the sale of their labor power and for the possibility of selling their labor power in general.
The aggregate proletariat is opposed by the aggregate bourgeoisie, united by the average rate of profit. The bourgeois class is divided into layers in accordance with which particular transformed form of surplus value is appropriated. Marx identified: a) industrial capitalists (business income), b) bankers or rentiers (interest on capital), c) merchant capitalists (trade profit) and d) landowners (land rent). These layers are united by the appropriation of surplus value and confront the proletariat as a single whole. Industrial capitalists, traders, bankers (rentiers) and landowners are interested in strengthening (intensifying) the exploitation of the proletariat and “squeezing” the maximum amount of surplus value out of it. But regarding the surplus value already produced, there is confrontation (competition) between the different layers of the bourgeois class: the industrial capitalist strives for a low price for credit, a high price for his products, low rent for land, a banker for a high price for credit, a landowner for a high rent, etc. The friction between layers of the bourgeoisie is quite acute and determines the forms of reality of capitalist society, but only until it comes to the common interests of the capitalists in the face of the proletarian class. In this case, factional strife becomes unimportant for the bourgeois class, it becomes united and turns, in Marx’s words, into a real “Masonic brotherhood” to defend the interests of capital.
The most active part of the bourgeois class are the capitalist industrialists; they are at the center of Marx's study. An industrial capitalist combines two functions in his activities - the functions of production management (managerial labor) and labor of exploitation, labor of appropriating surplus value. “A capitalist is not a capitalist because he runs an industrial enterprise; - on the contrary, he becomes the head of industry because he is a capitalist. Supreme power in industry becomes an attribute of capital, just as in the feudal era the highest power
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supreme power in military affairs and in court was an attribute of land ownership” 1. Marx focuses on the second function. It is seen by Marx as becoming obsolete: the proletarians are able to replace the capitalist within the enterprise and hire him as a worker (he points to such examples in contemporary England) or to displace the capitalist class within the entire society.
In addition to the proletarians engaged in direct production, there is also a thin layer of hired workers who carry out the work of managing the labor of the former, including the functions of supervision and control over it. Marx included in their composition “industrial officers (managers)” and “non-commissioned officers (overseers, foremen, overlooker, contre-maitres)” 2. There are no clear instructions from Marx about determining the place of the relevant individuals in the social class structure; from his position it follows that this group is not independent in social terms: its lower strata gravitate towards the proletariat, and its upper strata - towards the bourgeoisie.
As a special part of the proletarian class, Marx considered unemployed, this product of the “relative overpopulation” of bourgeois society. The author of Capital called this social group the “industrial reserve army.” This social group is the visible embodiment of the contradiction between productive forces and capital. The development of the capitalist mode of production, growing capitalist accumulation leads to an increase in this layer. The more capitalism develops, the more capital is accumulated, the more the absolute and relative number of unemployed grows. Taking advantage of the existence of this layer, the bourgeoisie exerts economic pressure on the proletariat, forcing it to accept terms favorable to it for the sale of labor power. Unemployment “chains the worker to capital more tightly than the hammer of Hephaestus chained Prometheus to the rock” 3 . Unemployment and pauperism 4 were, according to Marx, one of
1 Marks K. Capital. T. 1 // Marx K, Engels F. Op. T. 23. P. 344.
2 Ibid. pp. 343-344.
3 Ibid. P. 660.
4 Marx used the term “paupers” in relation to the declassed
capital to producers: a) workers who have become victims of unemployment
(at the stage of a mature capitalist mode of production) and b) expropriation
to peasants and artisans (at the stages of emergence and formation
of the capitalist mode of production).
History of sociology
The most visible manifestations of the contradiction between productive forces and production relations. This phenomenon, as a reproducible prerequisite for the development of the capitalist mode of production, not only is the destruction of man as a productive force, but also destroys the proletarians as individuals, leading to various forms of degradation and social barbarism - crimes, mental disorders, etc. Marx noted, in particular, the direct connection between the mental health of the proletarian class and the development of capitalist relations: “The growth of the number of insane people in Great Britain does not lag behind the growth of exports and has outstripped the growth of population” 1 .
Marx identifies as an important element of the social structure of bourgeois society, acting as an intermediate link between capitalists and proletarians, small owners or small producers, those. a social group of individuals who combine in their activities the functions of capital and labor, command of labor (their own or one’s own and others’) and the functions of direct labor (one’s own or one’s own and others’). Representatives of this layer, paradoxical as it may sound at first glance, are engaged in one way or another in the labor of exploiting themselves 2 . This social group is largely a legacy of pre-capitalist modes of production and, on a limited, increasingly narrowing scale, continues to exist under the capitalist mode of production. It occupies any noticeable place in the system of social production until capital has completely mastered the production process, without
3 Marks K. The increase in the number of insane people in England // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 12. P. 548.
2 “The independent peasant or artisan splits into two. As the owner of the means of production he is a capitalist, as a worker he is his own wage-labourer. Thus, as a capitalist, he pays himself wages and derives his profit from his capital, i.e. exploits himself as a wage worker and, in the form of surplus value, pays himself the tribute that labor is forced to give to capital... This way of thinking, no matter how irrational it may seem at first glance, is in fact still something correct, namely: in the case under consideration, the producer creates, however, his own surplus value (it is assumed that he sells his goods at its value), in other words, only his own labor is embodied in the entire product... only thanks to the ownership of the means of production he has his own surplus labor, and in this sense he treats himself as a hired worker." (Marx K., Engels F. Economic manuscript of 1861-1863 // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 48. pp. 57-58).
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achieved real dominance over production methods. The weight of this layer is inversely proportional to the degree of capitalist development - with the development of bourgeois relations, it asymptotically tends to zero. The most typical representatives of this layer are peasants, artisans and small traders. Marx views this layer as eroding, decomposing into elements that make up the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but never completely disappearing in bourgeois society 1 . Adjacent to this layer are individuals engaged in the work of providing personal services primarily to representatives of the bourgeois class - servants, cooks, gardeners, tailors, shoemakers, hairdressers, etc. This layer is occupied with unproductive labor; his labor produces goods, but not surplus value, not capital.
A special part of the layer of small owners is petty bourgeoisie,“small owners”, according to Marx, i.e. a social group of small owners who command their own and others’ labor and are “something in between a capitalist and a worker” 2 . The small proprietors and the petty bourgeoisie represent degrees of difference in numbers along the path of transition from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.
Particularly difficult was the problem of determining the place in the social class structure of individuals who ensure the functioning of the political and legal superstructure, as well as forms of social consciousness - politicians, officials, military men, lawyers, clergy, philosophers, scientists, musicians.
1 “...A craftsman or peasant who produces with the help of his
own means of production, or little by little turns into small
a capitalist who actually exploits the labor of others, or is deprived of his own
means of production... and turns into a hired worker. This is the trend
in that form of society in which the capitalist mode of production predominates
production" (Marx K. Economic manuscript of 1861-1863 // Marks K.,
Engels F. Op. T. 48. pp. 58-59).
2 Marx K. Capital. T. 1 // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 23. P. 318.
History of sociology
Kants, artists, writers, etc. Marx thought a lot about whether they could be classified as proletarians, but he never came to a clear and final conclusion.
When studying the social structure of bourgeois society, Marx also touched upon the problem of vertical social mobility, i.e. the problem of changing the socio-economic status (status) of individuals relative to the position of their social group. He considered the main form of vertical social mobility in bourgeois society to be the decomposition of groups of small owners and the petty bourgeoisie, the development of which is characterized by a tendency to disintegrate into a capitalist minority and a proletarian majority.
Class struggle
The class struggle in general, and the class struggle of the proletariat and bourgeoisie in particular, arising from the development of contradictions in the mode of production, are in the sociological system of Marx and Engels a necessary form of social dynamics, a powerful factor in the development of society. Marx emphasized: “The struggle between the capitalist and the wage worker begins with the very emergence of the capitalist relation” 1 .
The class struggle of the proletariat unfolds in three forms. This is an economic struggle, i.e. the struggle for improving the conditions for selling one’s labor force (increasing wages, providing better working conditions, etc.), political struggle (for eventual mastery of the state), ideological and theoretical struggle (expressing one’s interests at the scientific and ideological level). Engels wrote about the German labor movement: “For the first time since the labor movement existed, the struggle is being conducted systematically in all three of its directions, coordinated and interconnected: theoretical, political and practical-political (resistance to capitalists). In this, so to speak, concentric attack lies the strength and invincibility of the German movement” 2. The most common and historically initial one is the economic struggle, the struggle for surplus value. The bourgeoisie strives, as Marx put it, to “squeeze” the maximum possible amount of surplus value from the proletariat by increasing the working day, intensifying the labor process, etc. The proletariat resists
1 Marks K. Capital. T. 1 // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 23. P. 438.
2 Engels F. Addendum to the 1870 preface to The Peasants' War
Germany" // Marx K., Engels F. T. 18. P. 499.
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Therefore, it fights for higher wages, improvement (stabilization) of working conditions, and the introduction of factory legislation. An indicator of the maturity of the proletariat is the political form of its class struggle, i.e. the struggle to seize political power (the state), to establish one’s own dictatorship. As its most striking example, Marx considered the Paris Commune, which arose in 1871. The ideological, or theoretical, form of struggle means the introduction of communist ideas into the masses of the proletariat and the struggle against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois thought forms and feelings. The proletariat in its development, deploying these forms of struggle, passes the path from a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself. From a collection of atomized individuals aware only of their particular (individual or collective) interests, it turns into a community of individuals who recognize themselves as a class with common interests, a class antagonistic to the bourgeoisie.
In the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, other layers of bourgeois society behave differently. The petty bourgeoisie can be an ally of the proletariat, but this is a very unstable ally due to social duality. Engels, in the preface to The Peasant War in Germany, wrote about them: “They are extremely unreliable, except in those cases when victory is won: then they raise an unbearable cry in the beer halls. Nevertheless, among them there are also very good elements who themselves join the workers” 1. In many works, Marx and Engels noted that the petty bourgeoisie very often found itself on the side of the bourgeoisie and against the proletariat in the class battles of the 20th century. The lumpen-proletariat layer in a critical situation of acute class struggle shows itself to be malicious, inclined to “sell” itself to reaction. This was shown, for example, by the events of June 1848 in Paris, when the “mobile guard”, formed by the bourgeoisie from the lumpen proletariat, was used to suppress the uprising of the Parisian working class. Marx and Engels noted in 1848: “The lumpen proletariat, that passive product of the rotting of the lowest strata of the old society, is in some places drawn into the movement by the proletarian revolution, but due to its situation in life it is much more inclined to sell itself for reactionary machinations” 2 .
1 Engels F. Preface to the second edition of “The Peasant War in
Germany" // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 16. P. 418.
2 Marx K., Engels F. Manifesto of the Communist Party // Marks K.,
Engels F. Op. T. 4. P. 434.
284 History of sociology
The international aspect of the class struggle of the proletariat is extremely important. Since the level of development of capitalism in the most advanced countries of Western Europe is approximately the same, and the capitalist mode of production, as it develops, outgrows state and national boundaries, the revolution must simultaneously embrace developed nations (primarily we were talking about France, England and Germany). The international character of the socialist revolution is the most important condition for its success. Even in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote that when a revolution is carried out in an isolated country, the expansion of its communication with the outside world will inevitably destroy local communism.
The theory of classes and class struggle is one of the fundamental parts of the Marxist theory of society. In its development, Marx relied on the achievements of world social science thought, starting with ancient authors. The author of Capital himself defined his contribution to the tradition of class theory as follows: “As for me, I owe neither the credit that I discovered the existence of classes in modern society, nor that I discovered their struggle among themselves. Long before me, bourgeois historians outlined the historical development of this class struggle, and bourgeois economists outlined the economic anatomy of classes. What I did new was the following: 1) that existence of classes connected only with certain historical phases of production, 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship of the proletariat itself constitutes only a transition to the destruction of all classes and to society without classes" 1 .
The combination of three forms of class struggle in capitalist society in a social revolution will lead, as the founders of Marxism believed, to the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in turn will be a prologue to the beginning of the history of a society without private property and classes.
Political-legal superstructure and forms of social consciousness
The mode of production creates and reproduces an adequate political-legal superstructure and forms of social
1 Marks K. Letter to I. Weidemeyer dated March 5, 1852 // Marx K., Engels F. Op. T. 28. pp. 424-427.
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consciousness and determines - sometimes in a very complex, indirect form - their development.
The greatest attention of Marx and Engels was directed to the study of state policy. This was due, firstly, to the theoretically greatest importance of the state in social life compared to other superstructural phenomena, which was expressed primarily in its direct impact on the mode of production, and, secondly, practically, to the importance of the state (policy) from the point of view of class contradictions, a possible proletarian revolution.
The most essential principles on which politics and law are based in bourgeois states are the principles of freedom and equality. Marx believed that freedom and equality (in the understanding of the New Age) are the political and legal attributes of capital, the political and legal forms of its movement. Freedom in bourgeois society, according to Marx, in its essence is the phenomenon of the absence of any (mainly political and legal nature) obstacles to the movement of capital, its expanded reproduction, the phenomenon of limitlessness, the limitlessness of the accumulation of capital. This definition of freedom is therefore negative, carried out through negation. Every individual is free only insofar as he personifies the expanded reproduction of capital. The capitalist, as the personification of capital, is disproportionately freer than the proletarian, and a capitalist with more capital is freer than a capitalist with less capital. Marx wrote: “Under conditions of free competition, it is not individuals who are free, but capital. As long as production based on capital is the necessary and therefore the most suitable form for the development of social productive power, the movement of individuals within purely capitalist conditions appears as their freedom, which, however, is dogmatically glorified as such by incessant references to limits, destroyed by free competition" 1 .
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. In its development, capitalism goes through several stages, 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
Great Britain
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. The extremely rapid growth of industrial production compared to other European countries was accompanied by the proletarianization of a significant part of the population, the deepening of social conflicts, and cyclical crises of overproduction that regularly repeated 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 major role in the formation of the bourgeois class was played by the system of buying out taxes and public debts, and later by the government’s protectionist policy 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. The Great French Revolution, having radically eliminated the feudal absolutist system that hindered the growth of capitalism, simultaneously led to the emergence of a stable system of small peasant land ownership, which left its mark on the entire 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. The main feature of French capitalism in 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 the Civil War of 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. Railways played an exceptional role in the industrial boom in the mid-19th century in Germany, 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 its 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, competition between non-cooperative fragmented commodity producers is replaced by capitalist competition, which leads to the formation of an average rate of 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 that are in private capitalist ownership. The contradiction between the social character 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 (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 of the working class are created, and the subjective prerequisites for a socialist revolution are 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.” The scientific theory of 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 attributable to the non-monopoly bourgeoisie and the necessary product of 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 technical progress, with the expansion of the service sector and the growth of the bureaucratic state apparatus, the number and proportion of employees, whose social status is similar to 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 domestic 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 of capitalism in the era of imperialism and came to the conclusion that the victory of the socialist revolution was possible 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 large cities, sharply increased the urban population at the expense of the rural population, 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, and suffering of the masses of the entire 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 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. There is no ideal option. 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 on the territory of modern Russia gradually, after serfdom was abolished. Over several decades, there has been an increase in industrial production and 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. The modern country lives in the conditions of a new capitalism, built taking into account the mistakes of the past.