Stages of development of society by Marx and Toffler

The modern world, which we know today, has been created for thousands of years and has emerged not only and not so much through technical innovation. To no less extent, its development was influenced by social development. Each period in the history of human civilization has its own characteristics. In the socio-political and economic thought of the last centuries there were many very different views and approaches to dividing the historical process into different stages of development of human society. To date, the most popular classification of the American futurist Alvin Toffler. The latter distinguished the following stages of development of society in history:

• The agrarian society. Represented almost entirely by the peasant population. It is the subsistence economy and the non-productive nature of production that characterizes this period of development.
• Industrial society. It arose as a result of the massive technological innovations of the New Time: the replacement of manual labor in the machine and industrial revolution. These processes exerted a strong influence on social development, triggering the intensification of commodity-capitalist relations, as well as social stratification.
• Post-industrial society. It should be remembered that the stages of development of society do not penetrate evenly into all corners of the planet. A number of Third World countries are barely experiencing industrialization today. At the same time, many Western countries have already passed this stage by entering the information stage. Post-industrial society is characterized by the fact that the bulk of people in it are no longer engaged in the production of material goods. These processes are automated. Now the overwhelming majority of the population is engaged in all kinds of intellectual work.

Marxist view on the stage of development of society

Types of societies in the historical perspective, perhaps even more deeply and fully studied by the German scientist Karl Marx. And later a lot of his followers. Actually, it was in this methodology that for the first time it was suggested to look at society as a result of production relations. And this approach is today the most advanced and popular (not only in communist or socialist concepts). The development stages of Marx's society were divided into five main formations.

• Primitive communal. At this stage, society did not have any surplus product at all. Everything was consumed immediately without any residue. So, and could not arise property stratification.
• Slave-owning. The well-being of society was fundamentally rested on forced slave labor.
• Feudal, where there was a very specific hierarchy of vassals and suzerains. The grass-roots structures of such a society are the foundation of his life activity. An important characteristic of the feudal formation is the prevalence of natural, non-commercial management. It is interesting that the stages of development of society loomed in Marx's work on the basis of European experience. The theorist believed that such historical development is universal. However, as it turned out, this is not so. In the East, there was a completely different, polished way of production. There were no relations between the vassal-suzerain, nor private property (which is even more important). Thus, feudalism was strictly a European phenomenon.
• Capitalism. According to Marx, capitalism is replacing feudalism, when violent methods of coercion are replaced by economic levers, the notion of commercial activity, new classes, etc. arise.
• The communist formation. However, capitalism tends to increase the exploitation of workers and the permanent deterioration of their situation. In the opinion of the Marxists, this state of affairs was bound to end sooner or later with the revolution and the establishment of a more just society. These ideas had a major impact on the history of our planet's 20th century. At the same time, experience, as always, made significant adjustments both in assessing the viability of communism and in the development of capitalist states.