Human evolution is a theory of the origin of people created by the English naturalist and traveler Charles Darwin. He claimed that the ancient one came from . To confirm his theory, Darwin traveled a lot and tried to collect different ones.
It is important to emphasize here that evolution (from the Latin evolutio - “unfolding”), as a natural process of development of living nature, accompanied by a change in the genetic composition of populations, really takes place.
But regarding the emergence of life in general and the emergence of man in particular, evolution is rather meager in scientific evidence. It is no coincidence that it is still considered just a hypothetical theory.
Some tend to believe in evolution, considering it the only reasonable explanation for the origin of modern people. Others completely deny evolution as an unscientific thing, and prefer to believe that man was created by the Creator without any intermediate options.
So far, neither side has been able to scientifically convince opponents that they are right, so we can confidently assume that both positions are based purely on faith. What do you think? Write about it in the comments.
But let's understand the most common terms associated with the Darwinian idea.
Australopithecus
Who are Australopithecus? This word can often be heard in pseudo-scientific conversations about human evolution.
Australopithecus (southern apes) are upright descendants of Dryopithecus, who lived in the steppes about 4 million years ago. These were quite highly developed primates.
A skilled man
It was from them that the most ancient species of people originated, whom scientists call Homo habilis - “skillful man.”
The authors of the theory of evolution believe that in appearance and structure, Homo habilis did not differ from apes, but at the same time he was already able to make primitive cutting and chopping tools from roughly processed pebbles.
Homo erectus
The fossil species of people Homo erectus (“upright man”), according to the theory of evolution, appeared in the East and already 1.6 million years ago spread widely throughout Europe and Asia.
Homo erectus was of average height (up to 180 cm) and had a straight gait.
Representatives of this species learned to make stone tools for work and hunting, used animal skins as clothing, lived in caves, used fire and cooked food on it.
Neanderthals
The Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) was once considered the ancestor of modern humans. This species, according to the theory of evolution, appeared about 200 thousand years ago, and ceased to exist 30 thousand years ago.
Neanderthals were hunters and had a powerful physique. However, their height did not exceed 170 centimeters. Scientists now believe that Neanderthals were most likely just a side branch of the evolutionary tree from which man originated.
Homo sapiens
Homo sapiens (in Latin - Homo sapiens) appeared, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, 100-160 thousand years ago. Homo sapiens built huts and huts, sometimes even living pits, the walls of which were lined with wood.
They skillfully used bows and arrows, spears and bone hooks to catch fish, and also built boats.
Homo sapiens was very fond of painting his body and decorating clothes and household items with drawings. It was Homo sapiens who created human civilization, which still exists and develops today.
Stages of development of ancient man according to the theory of evolution It should be said that this entire evolutionary chain of human origin is exclusively Darwin’s theory, which still has no scientific evidence.
World history is a single process that follows objective laws, that is, existing laws independent of the consciousness and will of people. In this sense, it is an objective and predetermined process. But this is such an objective predetermination that not only does not exclude, but, on the contrary, presupposes accidents. The historical process is predetermined only in the main and fundamental aspects, but not in the details. What cannot not be is manifested in what may or may not be. Necessity always appears and exists only in accidents. Therefore, in history there have always been and are different possibilities for future development. But if the future in history is always alternative, polyfurcative (within certain objective boundaries, of course), then the past is without alternative and irreversible. To understand history, you need to abstract from the particulars, to reveal the objective necessity and predetermination that carves its way through all accidents.
World history is a single process that represents an ascent from the lowest to the highest. Therefore, there are stages of progressive development of humanity, and, consequently, world-historical eras. This understanding of history is called unitary-stage. Of all the concepts of history that have existed and exist, I consider the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations to be the best. Formations are stage types of society, identified on the basis of socio-economic structure.
Marxism, as you know, believes that the development of society is based on the development of production. The productive forces of society are growing, which leads to a change in systems of socio-economic relations, the types of social production - methods of production - are changing, which entails a change in types of society: one socio-economic formation is replaced by another, more progressive one. But the countdown of formations does not start from the very beginning of human history.
Its entire history is quite clearly divided into two qualitatively different periods, to the first of which the concept of socio-economic formation is inapplicable. It represents the period of transformation of human animal ancestors into people and zoological unification into human society, the period of anthroposociogenesis. The basis of this process was the formation of social production. The emergence of a completely new social quality necessarily presupposed and made necessary the curbing of animal individualism, the suppression and introduction of zoological instincts into a social framework. The most important means of curbing animal egoism were the first norms of human behavior - taboos. Morality subsequently arose on the basis of tabooite. Unlike an animal, whose actions are determined by biological instincts, a person is guided by feelings of duty, honor and conscience.
The first was to curb the food instinct. Distribution relations emerged as a social framework for it - the initial and most important form of socio-economic relations. The first socio-economic ties were communist. Animal egoism could only be curbed by human collectivism. With the advent of the first form of marriage - dual-clan, group marriage - the sexual instinct was curbed. With the introduction of first food and then sexual instincts into the social framework, the process of formation of man and society was completed. People in the making have turned into people who are already formed and ready. The period of formation of society has ended, and the history of a ready-made, truly human society has begun. This happened quite recently, literally “the other day.” The period of anthroposociogenesis, which began 1.9–1.8 million years ago, ended approximately 40 thousand years ago. And socio-economic formations are stages of development of a ready-made, formed society.
In our country, the first form of existence of a ready-made society is usually called a primitive society, in Western literature – a primitive, or egalitarian, society. It was the only one that existed in the era from 40 thousand to 5 thousand years ago. This time is the era of primitive society. At the earliest stage of its development it was communist (primitive communist). At the stage when the entire social product was life-sustaining, no other form of distribution other than distribution according to needs could exist.
With the development of productive forces and the emergence of regular surplus products, communist relations became an obstacle to the development of society. As a result, distribution according to labor began to emerge, and with it the property of individuals, exchange and property inequality. All this prepared and made inevitable the emergence of private property, the exploitation of man by man, thereby the split of society into social classes and the emergence of the state.
The first class, or, as they are usually called, civilized societies arose in the 31st century. BC e., that is, approximately 5 thousand years ago. At this time, one of the features of the world-historical process was more than clearly manifested - the uneven development of human society as a whole. Some specific individual societies - sociohistorical organisms (abbreviated as sociors) - went ahead, others lagged behind them in their development. With the advent of such unevenness, human society as a whole began to consist of several historical worlds. One such historical world was made up of the most advanced sociohistorical organisms for a given era, which can be called superior (from lat. super- above, above), another or other worlds - lagging behind in development - inferior (from lat. infra- under).
The first class societies arose as isolated islands in the sea of primitive society. One such historical class nest appeared in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, another in the Nile Valley. The Egyptian civilization, at its inception, was a single sociohistorical organism, while the Sumerian civilization was a system of small sociohistorical organisms, city-states.
Further development followed two paths. The first is the emergence of new historical nests that existed like islands in the sea of primitive society. One of them appeared in the Indus Valley - the Harappan civilization, the other - in the Yellow River Valley - the Yin or Shang civilization. The second way is the emergence of many class sociohistorical organisms in the space between Egypt and Mesopotamia and in the vicinity of them. All of them, together with Egypt and Mesopotamia, formed a huge system of class sociohistorical organisms that covered the entire Middle East. This Middle Eastern historical arena, having emerged, became the center of world-historical development and, in this sense, the world system.
All sociohistorical organisms that found themselves outside the historical center constituted the world periphery. Some of these sociors were class, others were primitive. With the advent of the first class sociologists and especially with the emergence of the Middle Eastern world system, the second era of development of the ready-made human and the first era of the history of civilized society began - the era of the Ancient East.
The basis of the original class societies was that antagonistic mode of production, which, following K. Marx, is most often called Asian. Its peculiarity is that it was based on general class private ownership of both the means of production and the individual producers of material goods. In this case, the private owner was only the exploiting class as a whole, and not one of its members, taken individually. General-class private property acted in the form of state property, which determined the coincidence of the ruling class with the composition of the state apparatus. Therefore, this production method is best called politary (from the Greek. polity- state). All politarists constituted a corporation - a political system, headed by a politarch, who was both the supreme manager of the surplus product and the ruler of the state. The politarch had the right to life and death of all his subjects, including politarists.
An indicator of the level of development of productive forces is the volume of product created in a society per capita. This indicator - the productivity of social production - can be increased in different ways.
In a political society, the increase in the productivity of social production and thereby the productive forces was achieved mainly by increasing working time - the number of working days per year and working hours per day. This temporal (from lat. tempus– time) the method of increasing the productivity of social production was limited. Sooner or later, a limit was reached beyond which an increase in working time led to the physical degradation of the main productive force - the human worker. There was a pullback. All this has been repeated many times in the history of political sociohistorical organisms.
First of all, the cyclical nature of the development of societies of the Ancient East is connected with this: they arose, flourished, and then entered into eras of decline and even death. The political, socio-economic formation was a dead end. She was not able to transform into another, more progressive one.
The way out of the impasse became possible because, in addition to political societies, primitive societies continued to exist, including the latest of them - pre-class ones, and of various socio-economic types. The pre-class societies that were adjacent to the Middle Eastern world system were subject to powerful cultural, political and economic influences from it. As a result, they learned all the main achievements of political societies, which significantly affected their entire development.
It became different from the evolution of protopolitarian (emerging politarian) pre-class societies from which the first politarian societies emerged. Pre-class societies, exposed to the influence of the world political system, eventually also turned into class societies, but only of a completely different type than the ancient Eastern ones. Ultimately, they established not a political, but a qualitatively different mode of production, precisely the one that is usually called slave-owning, or ancient.
In the 8th century BC e. A Greek historical nest arose, then Etruscan, Latin, and Carthaginian nests joined it. All of them, taken together, formed a new historical arena - the Mediterranean, which has since become the center of world-historical development. Thus, on the scale of humanity, in the form of a change in the world systems of sociologists of two different socio-economic types, the political formation was replaced by the ancient formation. The transfer of the historical baton from the political Middle East to the ancient Mediterranean has been completed. With the transfer of the historical center to the emerging new ancient arena, the Middle Eastern political historical arena ceased to be a world system. It became part of the world periphery. With the transformation of the Mediterranean historical arena into a world system, the second era of world history ended - the era of the Ancient East and the third - the era of antiquity began.
If in the era of the Ancient East, outside the world system there were only many primitive sociohistorical organisms and several isolated politaristic historical nests, then in ancient times the class historical periphery began to consist of many politaristic historical arenas. They filled most of the Old World, and by the 1st millennium BC. e. two political historical arenas - Mesoamerican and Andean - emerged in the New World.
It is generally accepted that the ancient world was based on slavery. But slavery is different from slavery. Slavery in itself is not yet a mode of production. It is an economic and legal state in which one person is the complete property of another. But a slave does not necessarily have to be used in the production of material goods. He can be a valet, a nanny, a teacher, an official, etc. Even when a slave is used in production, his labor can play a purely auxiliary role. In this case, they talk about domestic, or patriarchal, slavery.
The labor of slaves becomes the basis of society only when special economic units of production arise, in which slaves constitute the main force. And this necessarily presupposes the systematic import of slaves from outside society. This is exactly what ancient slavery was like. Slavery also existed in ancient Eastern society. But it was only in the ancient world that a special method of production, based on the labor of slaves, arose - servar (from lat. servus– slave) method of production.
Increasing the productivity of social production was based in the ancient world on increasing the share of workers in the population of society through the import of additional labor from outside the sociohistorical organism. And this meant tearing out this workforce from the surrounding sociology. The main source of slaves was the historical periphery, primarily the late primitive - pre-class, or barbarian, periphery.
Thus, the ancient world lived largely at the expense of the barbarian periphery. The method of increasing the productivity of social production characteristic of ancient society can be called demographic. Its capabilities, as well as the capabilities of the temporal method, were limited.
The normal functioning of ancient society presupposed continuous external expansion. But this attack on the historical periphery was bound to choke sooner or later. When this happened, a general decline and degradation of the ancient world began. The ancient (servar) socio-economic formation, like the political one, turned out to be a dead end. It, like the political one, could not turn into a more progressive formation.
With the decline of the ancient world, the barbarian periphery launched a counteroffensive. At the end of the 5th century. already n. e. The ancient world system came to an end. The ancient world collapsed under the blows of the barbarians. The entire territory of the last great ancient power - the Western Roman Empire - was conquered by Germanic tribes. And this opened up the possibility of breaking out of the historical impasse in which humanity once again found itself.
On the territory of Western Europe (the former Western Roman Empire) there was an organic merger, a combination of Roman (class) and German (pre-class) socio-economic structures (Roman-Germanic synthesis), as a result of which socio-economic relations of a qualitatively new type arose - feudal.
Feudal sociohistorical organisms, taken together, formed a new historical arena, which became the center of world-historical development and thereby the world system. The ancient socio-economic formation was replaced by the feudal one. The change from the ancient formation to the feudal one occurred, like the earlier change from the political formation from the ancient one, within the framework not of individual sociohistorical organisms, but of human society as a whole, and had the character of a historical relay race. It, like the change in the ancient political formation, occurred in the form of a change in world systems of sociohistorical organisms of different types and was accompanied by a territorial movement of the center of world-historical development. With the beginning of the formation of the feudal Western European world system, the ancient era was replaced by the fourth era of world history - the era of the Middle Ages.
Outside the world system, many primitive sociohistorical organisms and a large number of political historical arenas continued to exist. In Northern, Central and Eastern Europe there was a process of transformation of pre-class societies into class societies. But neither ancient socio-economic structures nor their fragments were there. Therefore, the Romano-Barbarian synthesis could not take place there, and, accordingly, feudalism could not arise there.
But these societies were in the zone of powerful influence of existing class societies - Western European, on the one hand, Byzantine, on the other. As a result, they took a step forward and at the same time to the side, to the side. There arose class societies of several special socio-economic types, different from the political, and from the ancient, and from the feudal. These non-mainstream socio-economic types can be called socio-economic paraformations.
Thus, along with the main line of human history, several side historical paths arose. One historical world was formed in Northern Europe, the other in Central and Eastern Europe. From the latter, in further development, another new historical world separated - the Russian one.
A characteristic feature of the late Middle Ages was the close symbiosis of feudal and trade-burgher methods of production. It was the development of cities with their trading and burgher economic system that prepared and made possible, and then necessary, the appearance in the 16th century. a new mode of production - capitalist. Capitalism independently, spontaneously arose in only one place on the globe - in Western Europe. With the transformation of feudal-burgher sociohistorical organisms into capitalist sociors, the world Western European feudal system was replaced by a Western European, but already capitalist system. It immediately became the center of world-historical development and thereby the world system. With the change of world systems, there was a transition from the era of the Middle Ages to the fifth era of world history - the era of Modern Time.
The development of capitalism occurred in two directions: in depth and in breadth. Development in depth is the formation and maturation of capitalism in Western European countries. Bourgeois revolutions thundered there, as a result of which power passed into the hands of the capitalist class, and the industrial revolution unfolded - the replacement of manual production with machine production. With the advent of machines, an adequate technical base was provided for capitalism, and as a result, the steady progress of the productive forces of society began. The technical method of increasing the productivity of social production, which came to the fore under capitalism, in contrast to the temporal and demographic methods, seemed to have no limits.
Along with the development of capitalism, its development went deeper and wider. In the process of the evolution of class society, the world systems that existed in certain eras always had a great impact on the historical periphery. But this influence in previous eras affected only a greater or lesser part of the peripheral sociors, which formed the immediate, or internal, periphery. These sociohistorical organisms became dependent on the center and, in particular, were exploited by it. The outer periphery continued to lead a completely independent existence.
With the advent of the global Western European capitalist system, the situation changed. Over the course of several centuries, the world capitalist system has drawn almost the entire periphery into its sphere of influence. For the first time, all sociohistorical organisms that existed on the globe formed one system. The world historical space that emerged as a result of the unfolding process of internationalization was clearly divided into two main parts.
The first part is the world capitalist system, which was the center of historical development. She did not remain unchanged. If initially it included only the states of Western Europe, then later it included the countries of Northern Europe and sociohistorical organisms that arose in other parts of the world by spinning off from Western European societies (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). The Western European world system then simply became Western.
The second part is all the other sociohistorical organisms that continued to make up the historical periphery, which in the end all, with the rarest exceptions, became, firstly, internal, and secondly, dependent on the historical center. The dependence of the periphery on the center meant the dominance of the center over the periphery. This dependence of the societies of the periphery on the countries of the center (and, accordingly, the dominance of the latter over the former) was expressed in the fact that the center exploited the periphery in various forms and appropriated free of charge part of the product created in the societies of the periphery. This exploitation is not intrasocior (endosocior), but extrasocior (exosocior), intersocior (intersocior). There is no term for this type of exploitation. I will call it international slavery, international slavery.
There are two main forms of this exploitation. One involves turning the country into a penal colony. This is colonial exploitation, colonial slavery. Another form is when a country that formally remains a sovereign and, in this sense, politically independent state is subject to exploitation. This kind of sociohistorical organisms can be called dependents (from lat. dependetio- dependence), and the form of their exploitation - dependent slavery.
The involvement of peripheral countries in the sphere of dependence on the center entailed the penetration and development of capitalist relations in them. The countries of the periphery, which were previously dominated by various kinds of pre-capitalist socio-economic relations, including ancient political ones, began to transform and eventually turned into capitalist socio-historical organisms.
Here one of the important features of world-historical development was more than clearly demonstrated. As can be seen from everything said above, world history is not a process of the simultaneous rise of all sociohistorical organisms from one stage to another, higher one. There never have been and never could have been socio-historical organisms that went through stages of historical development. One of the reasons is that there have never been sociohistorical organisms that would have existed throughout human history. Not only stages changed in history, but also sociohistorical organisms. They appeared and then disappeared. They were replaced by others.
Therefore, socio-economic formations have always been primarily stages of development of human society as a whole. Only human society as a whole could go through all the formations without exception, but in no case one sociohistorical organism taken separately. Formations could be stages in the development of individual societies, but this was not necessarily the case. Some socio-economic formations could be embodied in certain sociohistorical organisms, while others could be embodied in completely different ones. Only such an interpretation of the theory of socio-economic formations, which is called global-stage, global-formational, corresponds to historical reality.
As we have already seen, starting from the emergence of the first class societies, the change in socio-economic formations took the form of a change in world systems of superior sociohistorical organisms, entailing a change in world-historical eras. Each such world system of superior sociohistorical organisms prepared and made possible the emergence of another, more advanced one. The replacement of the Middle Eastern political world system by the Mediterranean ancient world system, the ancient one by the Western European feudal system, and the latter by the Western capitalist world system is the main line of world history.
With the advent of each new world system, the nature of the historical development of inferior sociohistorical organisms that found themselves in the zone of its influence changed. They could no longer develop the way organisms that had become superior developed, or go through the stages that the latter went through. The steps passed by superior sociohistorical organisms often became passed by inferior sociors, who never reached them.
This pattern emerged with particular clarity with the advent of the world capitalist system, into the sphere of influence of which the entire historical periphery was drawn. From then on, for all societies, no matter what stage of historical development they were at, the transition to capitalism and only capitalism became inevitable. Historians sometimes say that certain societies can and do bypass, skip certain stages of historical development. In fact, under the existing conditions, they could not avoid them. When the advanced part of humanity reached the stage of capitalism, then for all inferior societies, without exception, all stages of development that they themselves did not go through turned out to be already passed for them.
From here, it would seem, the conclusion followed that as soon as all inferior sociohistorical organisms become capitalist, the division of human society as a whole into historical worlds and thereby into a historical center and historical periphery will disappear. But the real historical development turned out to be more complicated.
The capitalism that arose in peripheral countries, due to their dependence on the world center, turned out to be qualitatively different from what existed in the states of the latter. In science it is called dependent, or peripheral, capitalism. For brevity, I will call it paracapitalism (from the Greek. rarA- near, near), and the capitalism of the center - orthocapitalism (from the Greek. orthos- straight, correct).
If the countries of the center belonged to the capitalist socio-economic formation and thereby to one historical world, then the societies of the periphery belonged to the para-capitalist socio-economic paraformation and thereby to another historical world. At the end of the 19th century. Tsarist Russia also joined the list of dependent paracapitalist countries.
The capitalist world system has not been politically unified for a long time. There was rivalry between the states that were part of it over colonies and spheres of influence. The split of the center into factions that fought for the division and redistribution of the peripheral world led to two world wars (1914–1915 and 1939–1945).
Peripheral capitalism, generated by dependence on the West, doomed these countries to backwardness and their population to hopeless poverty. Therefore, revolutions began to mature in them, with the goal of eliminating paracapitalism and liberating the country from exploitation by the West - socio-liberation (national liberation) revolutions.
The first wave of these revolutions unfolded in the first two decades of the 20th century: Russia, Persia, Turkey, China, Mexico and Russia again. One of these revolutions - the Great October Workers' and Peasants' Revolution of 1917 in Russia - ended in victory. It marched under the banner of socialism, but did not and could not lead to a classless society. Russia's productive forces are not ripe for this.
Therefore, the revival of private property and class society in the country was inevitable. And it was reborn, but in a new form. In Russia, a new type of politicalism arose - neopolitarism. But the country's liberation from semi-colonial dependence on the West made its powerful leap forward possible. From a backward, largely agricultural country, Russia became the Soviet Union in a matter of years, becoming the second industrial power in the world, and then becoming one of the two superpowers.
The October Revolution, having snatched Russia from the peripheral world, laid the foundation for a new world system - neopolitarian, which finally took shape after the second wave of socio-liberation revolutions that swept through the 40s and 50s. XX century for the countries of Central Europe and East and South-East Asia. As a result, the territory of the para-capitalist periphery sharply decreased and two world systems, two world centers emerged on the globe. This configuration of the world historical space was expressed in the public consciousness in the thesis about the existence of three worlds: the first, which was understood as the ortho-capitalist center, the second - the world neo-political system, which was commonly called socialist, and the third - the para-capitalist periphery, which continued to depend on the ortho-capitalist center.
But by the end of the 20th century. Neopolitarism in the USSR and Central European countries has exhausted its progressive possibilities. A new, this time truly socialist, revolution was needed, but in reality a counter-revolution took place. In the new states that emerged after the collapse of the USSR, including its largest “stump” - the Russian Federation, but excluding Belarus, and in most neo-politan countries of Europe, a restoration of peripheral capitalism took place. They again became dependents of the West.
As a result, there was a change in the configuration of the world historical space. All countries of the world were divided into four groups: (1) the ortho-capitalist world center; (2) old dependent periphery; (3) new dependent periphery and (4) independent periphery (North Korea, China, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Belarus, Cuba).
This configuration was superimposed on a new process that began in the last quarter of the 20th century - globalization. If it began at the turn of the 15th–16th centuries. internationalization consisted of uniting all sociors into a single world system, while globalization consisted of uniting all sociors into one world-wide (global) sociohistorical organism.
The world system by this time included two large groups of sociors, one of which exploited the other. As a result, the global sociology began to take shape as a class one, as split into two global classes. The world ortho-capitalist system began to turn into a global exploiting class, and the countries of the dependent para-capitalist periphery - into a global exploited class. And where there are classes, class struggle is inevitable. Humanity has entered an era of global class struggle.
The ortho-capitalist center acted as the attacker. The most favorable conditions were created for him. If in past times it was split into warring factions, then after the end of the Second World War it became largely united. It has one leader - the USA. It united organizationally: a significant part of its sociologists entered a common military alliance - NATO and a common economic union - the EU. Imperialism developed into ultra-imperialism.
However, in the period until the early 90s. The possibilities for action of the ortho-capitalist center were very limited. The ultra-imperialist beast was muzzled in the form of a powerful neo-political world system. The ortho-capitalist center was forced to come to terms with the loss of a large number of countries from the para-capitalist periphery, and with the disappearance of the colonial system, after which all surviving para-capitalist sociors became dependents.
With the collapse of the USSR and the disappearance of the global neo-political system, it seemed that the time had come for revenge.
Even earlier, it became clear to the countries of the center that dependencies were more difficult to exploit than colonies. Therefore, the Western center was faced with the task of once again establishing its complete and undivided dominance over the peripheral world and re-colonizing it.
But a return to the colonies of the previous type under the new conditions was impossible. The solution was found in the installation in peripheral countries of such regimes, under which their governments would forever turn into puppets of the West, especially the United States. In order for the leaders of these countries to be easy to keep in obedience and to change without unnecessary difficulty, these regimes had to be outwardly democratic. A. A. Zinoviev proposed calling such countries “democratic colonies.” I will call them satellites. The United States and its allies began to fight for world domination under the slogan of democratization of all countries of the world.
The greatest danger to the West was, of course, the countries of the independent periphery. He started with them. But China was clearly too tough for him. The first victim was Yugoslavia. The parts that “fell away” from it - Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina - immediately turned into satellites. The West launched a bandit attack on Yugoslavia, which remained part of Serbia and Montenegro. Kosovo was separated from Serbia. As a result of the “color” revolution organized primarily by the United States, it became a satellite of the West. The final chord is the separation of Montenegro, which had previously become a satellite.
Under the banner of the fight against international terrorism, NATO troops entered Afghanistan. The US and UK attacked Iraq. The country was occupied by foreign troops. A “color” revolution was carried out in Ukraine, and a similar coup d’etat was attempted in Belarus, which ended in complete failure. Every now and then there is a leak of information about the impending missile and bomb attack on Iran.
Along with the military and political offensive, there is an ideological and cultural expansion of the center. But what the West is now spreading outward is not its great culture that was created in the Renaissance and Modern times, but the current commercial culture, which has nothing in common with genuine art. A wave of propaganda of violence, cruelty, immorality, debauchery, homosexuality, etc. pours from the West in a muddy, stinking stream.
This Western pseudo-culture, of course, stands immeasurably lower than the local indigenous culture of the peoples of the periphery. The majority of the population of peripheral countries greets it with hostility. As a result, in their eyes, resistance to the West appears primarily as a struggle to preserve their traditional cultural values. As a result, a significant number of Western and not only Western political scientists understood the global class struggle as a clash of civilizations: Western, on the one hand, non-Western, on the other.
The pressure of the West is met not only by ideological protest, but also by other forms of resistance. A manifestation of the global class struggle is the powerful anti-globalist movement that has unfolded in recent decades, as well as international terrorism under the banner of radical Islamism.
But the main characters in the global class struggle are still not individual people or even large groups of them, but socio-historical organisms. The world that emerged after the disappearance of the global neo-political system is usually characterized as unipolar. This is both true and false. False, because the world is split into two groups of countries with opposing interests. True, because of these two groups of sociohistorical organisms, only the center is not just a system, but also a powerful organized economic, political and military force, which allows it to dominate and trample all the principles of international law, to act according to the principle of the landowner from the famous Nekrasov poem:
There is no contradiction in anyone,
Whom I want– have mercy,
Whom I want– I'll execute you.
Law– my desire!
Fist– my police!
The blow is sparkling,
The blow is tooth-breaking.
Hit the cheekbones!
As for the countries of the periphery, they never formed a single system. They were united only by dependence on common masters. These countries were divided, and many contradictions existed and still exist between them. Therefore, they were not a force. The center took advantage of this disunity. He was always guided by the long-known rule - “divide and conquer.” To do this, he used both the carrot and the stick. Some countries in the periphery, on the one hand, out of fear, and on the other, out of a desire to receive handouts from the master’s table, became satellites of the center. This is how a servile, lackey, lackey periphery was formed, which in its attitude towards other peripheral countries surpassed even the owners in terms of impudence.
Almost all countries of Central and Southern Europe (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, etc.), as well as Georgia, became such voluntary satellites of the West. For the most part, they were included in organizations that initially united mainly only the countries of the center - NATO and the EU. It is the countries of the center and the countries of the lackey periphery that are usually meant when they talk about the international, or world, community, referring to its opinions, its assessments of current events.
The countries of the rest of the periphery are not taken into account: it is as if they do not exist. And it’s clear why: in any class society, not excluding the global one, the dominant ideology is always the ideology of the ruling class.
The creation of the Kholuy periphery was largely initiated by the United States. The countries of the center form one bandit gang. But this does not mean that there is complete unity between them. There are contradictions both between individual ordinary members and between the latter and the “ataman”. The leader often puts pressure on the rank and file, trying to turn them from junior, but still partners, into servants. They put up all possible resistance.
Sometimes the rank and file try to curb the leader when he gets too carried away. For example, France and Germany opposed the US plan to attack Iraq. And the United States, having achieved the admission of the countries of the lackey periphery into NATO and the European Union, uses them to put pressure on its not always quite submissive ortho-capitalist partners.
If the Kholuy periphery as a whole still agrees to support the existing state of affairs, then the rest of the periphery as a whole is dissatisfied with it. But many of these dissatisfied people are forced to put up with the existing order. And even those who are his opponents do not dare to enter into open conflict with the countries of the center.
But now, in addition to hidden opponents of the “new order,” more and more direct, open ones are beginning to appear. These are primarily countries of the independent periphery, in particular Iran and Belarus. Now the third wave of socio-liberation revolutions is taking place before our eyes. They originate in Latin America. The countries in which these revolutions are unfolding rise from their knees and challenge, first of all, the leader of the center - the United States. These are Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua.
The struggle against the West requires the unification of the periphery countries for its success. And this objective necessity is increasingly beginning to make its way, often regardless of the subjective intentions of the ruling elites of peripheral countries. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) arose in Eurasia, including Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Mongolia, Iran, India, and Pakistan are taking part in its work as observers. They all want to join it; Iran has even submitted an official application.
Although the leaders of the SCO countries strongly emphasize that this organization was not created for the purpose of confronting any other countries, its anti-American and, more broadly, anti-Western orientation is obvious. It is not for nothing that the United States was denied the right to participate in its activities even as an observer. Many political scientists see the SCO as a kind of anti-NATO. Joint Russian-Chinese military exercises were held within the framework of the SCO. Within the CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) was created.
In Latin America, an organization was created called the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin American countries consisting of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, which is distinguished by a sharp anti-American orientation. Honduras recently joined. The desire to jointly resist the United States is associated with the creation in 2008 of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) consisting of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. US military bases are being dismantled in Ecuador and Paraguay. A triangle Caracas – Minsk – Tehran emerged. The abbreviation BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) arose to designate a peculiar informal union of the four largest countries of the peripheral world that is gradually acquiring more and more distinct outlines. Thus, the first steps have been taken towards uniting the peripheral world.
The position of Russia, which is the largest power in the world by territory, occupying more than half of Europe and a significant part of Asia, is of enormous importance for the fate of the peripheral world. The ruling elite of the Russian Federation, which emerged as an independent state after the collapse of the USSR, immediately took the path of fully pleasing the West and especially the United States. The Russian leadership, neglecting the interests of its own country, diligently followed all the instructions of the “Washington regional committee.”
This continued even after B.N. Yeltsin was replaced as president by V.V. Putin. The Americans ordered the sinking of the Mir - they drowned it, ordered to close the tracking station in Cuba - they closed it, demanded to leave the base in Cam Ranh (Vietnam) - they left it, etc. The number of concessions was endless. But in response to them, Russia received demands for more and more concessions and spitting in the face.
Russia was dragged into the lackey periphery, but at the same time they were denied handouts that other voluntary lackeys of the West received. In response to the desire of the Russian leadership to please the United States and the West, they diligently engaged in throwing a noose around her neck. The goal is to lead Russia as a slave under threat of strangulation. This was expressed in the constant approach of NATO to the borders of Russia, and in the creation of military bases, radars and missile systems on the territory of new members of this alliance.
Sooner or later, the Russian leadership’s complete disregard for national interests began to threaten the very existence of the country. A change in policy became more and more urgent. And the changes began. But they walked with a constant eye to the West, with constant retreats, endless vacillations and hesitations. Russia opposed, for example, tough sanctions against Iran, but, however, not against sanctions in general. On this occasion, one involuntarily recalls the famous Russian saying about something dangling in an ice hole.
But then Georgian President M. Saakashvili threw his army, armed to the teeth by the United States and a number of other states and trained by American instructors, against tiny South Ossetia with the goal of the wholesale extermination or expulsion of the Ossetian population. If successful, he was going to do the same with Abkhazia.
M. Saakashvili hoped that Russia, despite all the warnings expressed, would not dare to stand up for the Ossetians, fearing the inevitable sharp condemnation of these actions from the United States and, in general, the entire West as a whole. But the Russian leadership, knowing full well what would follow, decided on a conflict with the West. The Rubicon has been crossed.
In just five days, units of the Russian army completely defeated the Georgian troops, destroyed the air and naval forces of Georgia and eliminated almost all of its military infrastructure (bases, radar stations, etc.). Georgian soldiers fled in panic, prompting observers to quip that the Georgian army appeared to have been trained by American running instructors. The road to Tbilisi was open, but Russian troops, having forced Georgia to peace, stopped.
The international community mentioned above erupted in a storm of indignation. People who presented themselves as irreconcilable defenders of human rights unanimously rushed to the defense of Saakashvili and his accomplices, thereby, in fact, completely approving the genocide they had undertaken. But Russia, despite all these hysterical cries, continued the work it had begun: it recognized and reliably guaranteed the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Of all the Western countries, the United States was especially excited. From the lips of their leaders, after the end of hostilities, threats and urgent demands for the most severe punishment for Russia began to pour out. The most servile satellites of the West (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) came up with proposals to impose severe sanctions against Russia. Some Western European countries also started talking about sanctions. But, having calculated their possible consequences, they fell silent. It became clear that they would boomerang against themselves.
The United States and NATO sent their warships to the shores of Georgia, completely forgetting that the time of “gunboat diplomacy” was over, and it was never used against countries such as Russia. The presence of this fleet in the Black Sea turned out to be completely pointless. Even the leaders of the European Union understood this, expressing concern that this would only lead to an escalation of tensions, when they need to be eased. Convinced that there was and will not be any benefit from the presence of military vessels in the Black Sea, the United States was forced to withdraw them. It all came down to wasting fuel that is now so expensive. This did not bring any benefit to the United States, nor did it add glory. As a result, the United States and the West as a whole were unable to take any real measures against Russia. Thus, they clearly demonstrated their powerlessness.
As a result of these events, a serious blow was dealt to the prestige of the United States, which was unable to protect its most devoted lackey, which was a harsh lesson for all other American lackeys.
Russia won a huge military and political victory. The main thing was her victory over herself. Russia has become convinced that it can defend its interests without fear of the West and regardless of it. This was a lesson for the whole world: both for the center and for the periphery. It turned out that even one country, such as Russia, can successfully resist the West. It became clear that if united, the periphery could completely end its dominance over the world.
The threats of the United States and the West to put Russia in a position of isolation from the whole world turned out to be ridiculous. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad noted on this occasion, NATO and the EU are not the whole world. In the peripheral world, excluding the lackey periphery, Russia's actions everywhere aroused understanding and approval. The President of Iran immediately said this. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the same thing. Nicaragua announced the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign states. The SCO, which together with observers represents half of the population of our planet, expressed approval of Russia's active actions in the Caucasus. They unanimously condemned the aggression of Georgia and expressed agreement with the actions of Russia and the CSTO countries. But it was not possible to isolate Russia not only from the whole world, but even from Western Europe. The European Union, having condemned Russia, at the same time several times emphasized the need for further close cooperation with it.
In general, the events of August 2008 were a turning point in the history of the modern world. As French President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted, from that moment on the unipolar world came to an end. It has become absolutely clear that in addition to the world community to which Western politicians and publicists, as well as their henchmen, belong and about which they endlessly talk, outside of it there is partly emerging, partly already existing, another, second community, which has more reason to call itself world, because it represents 5/6 of the Earth's population.
The struggle between the center and the periphery will be long. But its outcome as a whole is already predetermined: the defeat of the West is inevitable. And his economic power will not help him. The largest of the independent periphery countries, China, is becoming a powerful economic force. In 2007, it already controlled 13.2% of global industrial production, catching up with the leader of the center - the United States, whose share was approximately 20%. According to the forecast of the research center “Global Insight”, already in 2009 these countries will change places: the share of China will be 17%, the USA – 16%.
But the main thing, of course, is the unity of the periphery countries. By uniting, the periphery will end the dominance of the West and its dependence on it. The destruction of the exploitation of the countries of the periphery by Western states will mean the elimination of para-capitalism and thereby capitalism in these countries in general. Having ended exploitation by the West, the periphery will thereby cease to be a periphery. She will become the center.
As for the ortho-capitalist center, deprived of the influx of surplus product from the outside, it will be doomed to radical changes in its social system. Now in the West there is a lot of literature that discusses scenarios for the future of humanity. And in most of these works there is invariably a statement of the long-ago and steadily continuing decline of the West. Almost all of these works draw an analogy between the current situation in the West and the last centuries of the Roman Empire, when it was heading towards its inevitable death as a result of complete internal decay and the pressure of external enemies - barbarians.
Authors who adhere to a wide variety of beliefs write about this: from the far left radicals to liberals and even the far right. In this regard, the title of the book by the American arch-reactionary P. J. Buchanan, “The Death of the West” (2002), is more than eloquent.
The essence of the matter is that capitalism has now exhausted all its former progressive possibilities. It has become a brake on the path of human development. It turned out that the use of a technical method of developing productive forces so characteristic of capitalism in the conditions of this society is approaching the limit. In the pursuit of profit, capitalism has developed technology so much that it now threatens the nature of the planet and thereby the existence of humanity.
Capitalism at a new level and in a new form revives the individualism that dominates the animal world, unbridles zoological instincts, destroys morality, deprives people of the sense of duty, honor and conscience and thereby turns them into a special kind of animal - animals with thinking and technology. Its preservation dooms humanity to degradation, ossification and, ultimately, death. To survive, humanity must end capitalism.
When Western countries are deprived of the opportunity to exploit the rest of the world, their only option will be the elimination of capitalism. When it is destroyed throughout the world in both its forms (both para-capitalist and ortho-capitalist), the era of transition to a society of a fundamentally different type will begin - a society without private property and exploitation of man by man. The division of human society as a whole into a historical center and a historical periphery will disappear. Humanity will merge into a single society.
But, unfortunately, another development option cannot be completely ruled out. The rulers of the ortho-capitalist West, sensing the approach of inevitable defeat, may decide to use nuclear weapons. Then both humanity and its history will come to an end. In the third orbit from the Sun, a dead, deserted planet will circle.
The obsolescence of capitalism and the danger that the continued existence of this economic system poses to humanity is more than clearly demonstrated by the enormous first financial and then comprehensive economic crisis that broke out in 2008. It forced many of its inveterate defenders to think about the future of capitalism, and the governments of capitalist countries to take measures that run counter to the basic principles of the functioning of the capitalist economy. The head of the American Chamber of Commerce, E. Somers, said that the era of the free market has ended and the era of state regulation of the economy has begun, which does not exclude the nationalization of banks and enterprises. The former head of the US Federal Reserve System, A. Greenspan, spoke directly about the usefulness of nationalizing the country's banks in conditions of a severe crisis. In the United States, this process has already begun, which prompted one of our publicists to publish a condemning article entitled “The Socialist States.” The German government also plans to nationalize problem banks. The representative of the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Maria de Belem Roseira, described the prevailing opinion that market mechanisms can provide solutions to social problems as a deep mistake. In fact, they cannot be solved without infringing on the “free” economy. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the current economic crisis was caused by the “bad” capitalism that has existed until now, it needs to be abolished and replaced by another capitalism, this time “good”. Existing capitalism must indeed be destroyed. But it can not be replaced by some other - better capitalism, for there is no such thing and cannot be, but only by a society based on public ownership of the means of production - communist.
I was prompted to write this article by my previous publication about the incident of self-enslavement. There I touched upon the topic of formations, which I want to consider in more detail.
This may seem boring, especially after the tedious memorization of dry facts in history lessons at school or college, but, in my opinion, it is very exciting and exciting. It is very interesting to understand the society in which we all live. By imagining the stages and laws of social evolution common to humanity, we can better understand our past, and the most interesting thing is to try to extrapolate them to the future and make an assumption about what lies ahead for all of us.
Formational approach
Image source: www.fotosimagenes.org Or the approach of socio-economic formations was developed by Karl Marx and subsequently developed by Friedrich Engels, but then, unfortunately, it had a difficult history and now, like all of Marx’s teachings, the formational approach, To put it mildly, it is not popular. I hope this omission will be corrected by the scientific community.
The criterion in this approach is socio-economic formation- a stage of social evolution, which is characterized by a method of production specific for a given formation and the production and economic relations corresponding to it.
For example, feudalism, as a socio-economic formation, is characterized by a feudal mode of production: an agricultural economy, the predominance of the rural population, the absence or rudiments of industrial sectors. The feudal mode of production corresponds to feudal production-economic relations: the ruling class (landowners) received rent from the peasants (the exploited class) through non-economic coercion.
Below I have highlighted the main features and characteristics of all formations.
Primitive communal system
Also called pre-agricultural society, hunter-gatherer society, or primitive communism society.
- Character traits:
- appropriating (non-producing) principle of production;
- absence of state, classes and private property;
- equal position of community members in relation to the means of production.
- Qualitative changes: man's exit from the animal kingdom.
- Basic production principle: hunter-gatherer.
- Class composition: absent.
- State: absent, the hierarchy was based on age and gender differentiation.
- Religion: primitive beliefs: animism, shamanism, totemism.
- Culture: Since there was no written language in this era, it is difficult to say anything specific.
The discovery of agriculture and cattle breeding allowed primitive people to begin to produce a surplus product, which entailed the property stratification of society, the separation of rich and ordinary members of the community, the clan nobility. Also, thanks to agriculture and cattle breeding, population growth and the consolidation of clan communities into tribes and chiefdoms began to occur. Prisoners of war and the poorest members of the community begin to be used as free labor, and society is divided into classes.
Public product- this is the totality of material goods created in all sectors of material production (means of production and consumer goods).
Required Product- part of the social product necessary for the normal, from the point of view of current socio-economic conditions, reproduction of the physical and spiritual abilities of the worker and his family members.
Surplus product- part of the social product produced in excess of the necessary product.
Slave system
- Character traits:
- agrarian-craft principle of production, subsistence farming;
- a slave does not own the means of production: neither land, nor tools, nor livestock;
- the slave is completely without rights in society (the slave is an object, not a subject of law);
- low level of technological development - disinterest of slaves in the development and growth of production and free labor of slaves for the owner;
- Qualitative changes: the transition from an appropriating to a producing economy, the emergence of a class society, the emergence of the state.
- Dominant class: slave owners.
- Exploited class: slaves
- Operation method: non-economic.
- State: State forms vary greatly depending on population density, terrain, and cultural differences, from Greek democracy to Asian empires with extensive bureaucracies and strong centralized states.
- Religion: the development of primitive beliefs in polytheism, as well as, under certain conditions, the emergence of monotheistic beliefs: the cult of Aten in Egypt, Yahweh in Judea.
- Culture: the emergence of a secular worldview in the form of various philosophical teachings: natural philosophy, Platonism in the West; Taoism, Confucianism in the east.
Slave-owning production relations, having laid the foundation for the division of labor and given impetus to the development of production forces, became economically unprofitable. The slave and the results of his labor were the full property of the individual or collective owner (community, temple, state), thus, the slave’s economic interest in his activities was virtually absent. This became the reason for the evolution of the slave system into a feudal system, through a gradual increase in the independence of slaves, for example, colonata in the Roman Empire.
Productive forces (German: Produktivkräfte) are means of production and people who have certain production experience, skills to work and put these means of production into action.
Not all nations went through the slave system. Having appeared on the arena of history in the vicinity of societies that had moved to a higher level of social development, some peoples, under their influence, bypassed previous socio-economic formations. For example, the Slavic and Germanic tribes completed the formation of a class society with the emergence of the feudal system.
Feudalism
- Character traits:
- agrarian-craft principle of production, subsistence farming, small individual production;
- monopoly of the ruling class of feudal lords on the main means of production - land;
- ownership of land was inextricably linked with dominance over the producing class of peasants;
- in contrast to the slave system, the peasant had his own farm, legally belonging to the feudal lord, but actually passed on by inheritance in the peasant’s family;
- the peasant was the owner of tools, real estate and livestock;
- The feudal lord, because of his “right” to the land, collected land rent from the peasants free of charge (corvée, quitrent).
- Qualitative changes: The economic independence of the peasant, established under feudalism (in comparison with the position of a slave), opened up the possibility of increasing labor productivity; the separation of crafts from agriculture led to a deepening of the division of labor and the emergence of legal recognition of the artisan’s ownership of the means of production (workshop, tools) and the products produced by him.
- Dominant class: feudal lords.
- Exploited class: peasants.
- Operation method: non-economic.
- State: in the early stages of feudalism, there was a deepening of the property stratification of society; the emergence of aristocracy, estates (social groups whose members differ in their legal status), centralization of the state. The main type of state becomes an estate monarchy.
In the later stages of feudalism, the form of political domination of the feudal class became an absolute monarchy (absolutism, autocracy). - Religion: The spread of feudalism and its early stages was accompanied by the spread of Christianity, which ideologically legitimized the feudal structure and hierarchy of society. At the stage of the emergence of new capitalist relations and classes in society and the decomposition of feudalism, radical changes took place in the religious sphere - the Reformation - changes in religion that suited the interests of the emerging capitalist class (see, for example, the Protestant work ethic).
- Culture: the development of productive forces under feudalism also led to the development of spiritual life. The Renaissance, characterized by its secular character, humanistic worldview, the emergence of science based on experimental knowledge, and a return to ancient culture, represented a movement against feudalism and the liberation of spiritual life from religious influence.
Late feudalism resulted in two completely different paths of development. In the countries of Western Europe with early emerging commodity-money relations, the growth of internal contradictions in society led to the bourgeois revolutions of the 16th-18th centuries, which replaced the feudal formation with the capitalist one, as more appropriate to the level of development of the production forces.
In some countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the process of formation of capitalist relations slowed down due to the feudal reaction, which consisted of the establishment of a dictatorship of the nobility, strong centralization of the state and the introduction of harsh forms of serfdom with the beginnings of commodity-money relations. As a result, the lordly plowing took on the character of a large business enterprise, and the exploitation of the peasants was of a slave-owning nature (some historians consider this to be a consequence of the increased demand for bread from the countries of Western Europe, where capitalist relations were being established at that time). Late feudalism became protracted and ended in some countries only in the second half of the 19th century.
Similar processes occurred in Asian countries, but there they were aggravated by the intervention of Western European countries, especially in China and India.
Capitalism
- Characteristic features and qualitative changes:
- industrial production principle;
- the dominance of commodity-money relations and deep division of labor;
- private ownership of the means of production;
- the transition from non-economic coercion to economic coercion - hired labor became a salable commodity;
- rapid development of technology and machine production.
- Ruling class: bourgeoisie.
- Exploited class: workers.
- Operating method: economic.
- State: limited and formal democracy.
- Religion: In many countries there has been a separation of church and state and the proclamation of a secular society, although the percentage of believers is still quite high.
- Culture: the growth of the intelligentsia, fantastic scientific achievements, scientific, technological and information revolutions have given humanity enormous opportunities, but it is not yet in a hurry to use them to the fullest.
Having gone through the stage of intense competition in the 19th century and the stage of redistribution of sales markets in the first half of the 20th century (two world wars), capitalism is now in a state-monopoly stage, which is characterized by the fact that the top of the bureaucratic apparatus has merged with the owners of large capitalist monopolies, a financial oligarchy , which greatly strengthened the position of capitalism.
Conclusion
The sources of Marx's ideas were the works of the classical English school of political economy (Adam Smith), German classical philosophy (Hegel) and the French utopian socialists (Saint-Simon). Thus, based on the ideas of the leading thinkers of his time, he develops them in the spirit of Renaissance humanism, trying to find an answer to the problem of social contradictions in society that have haunted him since the time of his exit from the animal kingdom.
Having examined the evolution of human society from prehistoric times to the 19th century, Karl Marx tried to extrapolate the data he collected for the future development of mankind, and describe the main features of the future formation.
Since an attempt to describe the future formation is a difficult and rather voluminous topic, along with such as an analysis of formations in Russia and the USSR (essentially having nothing to do with socialism and communism), as well as the current stage of development of capitalism, I will consider them in my future publications .
Geological history of the Earth
The name of our planet - Earth - comes from the Slavic “zem” - floor, bottom. The biggest difference between the Earth and other planets in the solar system is the existence on it of life that has reached high forms of development.
The geological history of the Earth is usually divided into two unequal stages: cryptozoic(a large interval of time devoid of obvious remains of skeletal living beings), or Precambrian, and Phanerozoic(literally – manifest life). Together they are about 3570 million years old. Earlier times are referred to as the pre-geological history of the Earth (Table 2.1).
Table 2.1. Geological zones, eras and periods
During the Archean era The most ancient endogenous deposits of chromium, copper, nickel and gold ores were formed, as well as the most ancient metamorphogenic deposits of ferruginous quartzites and metamorphogenic mica and rare metal pegmatites. In the Late Archean, oil shale deposits began to form due to the accumulation of multicellular algae.
During the Proterozoic era(2600 - 570 million years) in connection with basaltic magmatism, magmatic deposits of ores of chromium, iron, titanium, copper, nickel and platinum arose, and in connection with granite magmatism - deposits of ores of non-ferrous, rare and noble metals. During the same era, metamorphogenic deposits were formed, represented by the largest deposits of ferruginous quartzites such as Krivoy Rog and KMA, as well as gold-uranium conglomerates.
During the Phanerozoic era(570 million years - the modern era), exogenous deposits of oil shale, coal, oil and gas, salts, phosphorites, and sulfur appeared and developed in increasing quantities. Numerous endogenous deposits of ores of ferrous, non-ferrous, rare, noble and radioactive metals arose in mobile zones.
The most important event of the Cenozoic era was the appearance of man. It is believed that the oldest man appeared on earth 1 - 2 million years ago, in the Early Paleolithic era, and modern man (Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens) - no less than 40 thousand years ago, and maybe more.
Recent studies have shown that the ancestors of fossil humans are Australopithecus- appeared 5 million years ago in East Africa and about 2.6 million years ago they began to primitively process stone (mainly pebbles). Primitive people - archanthropes- also appeared in Africa 1.4 - 1.2 million years ago and gradually spread to Europe and Asia. Stone axes and scrapers were found near their remains. The time of existence of the Archanthropes - the Early Paleolithic - ended 350-400 thousand years ago.
Figure 2.2. Human evolution.
They were replaced paleoanthropes, or Neanderthals, they lived in the Middle Paleolithic (up to 35 thousand years ago). They were followed neoanthropes, modern people who have achieved success in stone processing. About 10 thousand years ago the Mesolithic began, and about 6 thousand years ago the Neolithic began. At this time, man already knew the first metals - copper and gold. About 5 thousand years ago the first bronze products appeared (Bronze Age), then 3 - 2.5 thousand years ago the Iron Age began, which continues in our time. The chronology of human civilization is presented in Table 2.2.
Table 2.2. Timeline of human civilization
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Geological history of the Earth The name of our planet - Earth - comes from the Slavic “zem” - floor, bottom. The biggest difference between the Earth and other planets in the solar system is the existence on it of life that has reached high forms of development. Geological... [read more]
The main stages of human development.
Most scientists adhere to the evolutionary theory, which is confirmed by the latest biochemical and genetic studies. The supposed common ancestor of humans and apes lived between 5 million and 10 million years ago.
During excavations on Lake Chad in 2002, the skull of a humanoid creature with characteristics of an ape and a human was discovered, whose age is estimated at 7 million years. The creature was named "Sahelanthropus from Chad" (Sahelanthropus tchadeensis).
It is assumed that Sachelonthropus, like humans, was upright. But some anthropologists believe that this is an ape-like creature, not a humanoid. Australopithecus (from lat.
australis – southern and Greek. pithekos - monkey), who lived in Africa 4.2-1 million years ago, is considered the closest to the ancestral form of humans. Australopithecus's body was covered with hair, and in appearance it was more ape-like than human. However, he walked on two legs and used various objects as tools, which was facilitated by the spaced big toe.
Brain volume (relative to body volume) was smaller than that of humans, but larger than that of modern apes.
A skilled man(homo habilis), so named because of its ability to make simple stone tools, is considered the very first representative of the genus Homo. Its brain is a third larger than that of an australopithecus, and the biological characteristics of the brain indicate the possible rudiments of speech. In other respects, Homo habilis was more similar to Australopithecus than to modern humans.
Homo erectus made more complex tools and knew how to use fire.
His brain volume is close to that of a modern person, he was able to organize collective activities (for example, hunting large animals) and began to use speech.
In the period from 500 thousand to 200 thousand years ago, there was a transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens. It is quite difficult to detect the boundary when one species replaces another, so representatives of this transitional period are sometimes called the most ancient homo sapiens.
A century and a half ago, the remains of a primitive man called Neanderthal (after the name of a place in Germany).
The volume of the Neanderthal brain corresponded to the modern one (and even slightly exceeded it); excavations also indicated a fairly developed culture, including rituals, the beginnings of art and morality (caring for fellow tribesmen). Previously, it was believed that Neanderthal man was the direct ancestor of modern man, but now scientists are inclined to believe that he is a dead-end, blind branch of evolution.
A new homo sapiens, that is, a modern type of man, appeared in Africa about 130 thousand years ago.
(impossible, and more) years ago, in a short time this one spread throughout Asia and Europe: the fossil “new people” were called Cro-Magnons after the place of the first discovery (Cro-Magnon in France).
Cro-Magnons looked little different from modern humans. They left behind numerous artifacts that allow us to judge the high development of their culture, cave paintings, miniature sculptures, engravings, jewelry, etc.
Homo sapiens populated the entire Earth 15-10 thousand years ago.
years ago. Gradually, tools improved and his life and historical experience accumulated; man moved to a productive economy (agriculture and livestock farming). The first large settlements arose, and in many areas humanity entered the era of civilizations.
Main factors of anthropogenesis
Biological factors:
- upright walking;
- hand development;
- big brain;
- ability for articulate speech.
Social factors(forms of activity) :
- work;
- collective activity;
- thinking;
- language and communication;
- moral.
It is believed that of the listed factors, labor played the leading role in the process of human development, in the example of which the interconnection of other biological and social factors is clearly demonstrated.
Thus, upright walking freed up the hands for using and making tools; the structure of the hand (spaced thumb, flexibility) allowed them to be used effectively. In the process of joint work, close relationships developed between members of the team, which led to the curbing of individualism, concern for members of the tribe (a system of prohibitions and norms), and the need for communication (the appearance of speech). Language contributed to the development of thinking, allowing the expression of increasingly abstract concepts; the development of thinking, in turn, enriched the language with new words.
Language also made it possible to transfer experience from generation to generation, preserving and increasing the knowledge of mankind.
Thus, biological factors and forms of social activity are closely interrelated and dependent on each other. In general, a person cannot be reduced solely to biological characteristics, since only society can make a person a person (confirmation of this is children raised by animals).
But it cannot be reduced only to social qualities, since biological prerequisites are necessary for human development (a developed brain, upright posture, etc.). Man lives simultaneously in two worlds - natural and social, being a biosocial being.
Definitions of man.
Human nature - This is a set of features and characteristics that distinguish a person from other living beings.Special qualities of a person : reason, ability to work, collective activity, language, morality, creativity, spirituality, faith, imagination, fantasy, laughter, awareness of one’s mortality and many, many other specific qualities and properties.
Human evolution
Once Plato gave the following definition of man: “Man is an animal with two legs, devoid of feathers,” Diogenes plucked a rooster and brought it to school, declaring: “Here is Plato’s man!” After this, the definition was added: “And with wide nails.”
Essence of Man – This is the main quality that determines the inner content of a person.
Various scientists have given very different definitions of the essence of man, who saw it in social activity, reason, creativity, play or faith.
There are many definitions of the concept “person”.
Aristotle called man a political animal (zoonpolitikon), emphasizing that man realizes his essence only in social life, entering into economic, political, and cultural relations with other members of society (state).
Karl Marx also emphasized the social essence of man: “The essence of man is not an abstraction inherent in an individual.
In its activity it is the totality of all social relations.”
Homo sapiens (reasonable man). This definition, which sees the essence of man only in the mind, also goes back to Aristotle. In modern times it became generally accepted, Rene Descartes called man a “thinking thing,” and after the appearance of biological classification it became the standard designation of species for modern man.
In the vast world, he is distinguished from the animal kingdom by his ability to think logically and be aware of himself and the world around him.
Homo faber (creative man). This concept was introduced by the Dutch philosopher J. Huizinge (1872-1945). Man, unlike animals, actively produces, creates, creates, and his activity is purposeful, has a value meaning and is creatively organized.
Creation is the basis of all the diverse activities performed by man: production, upbringing, education, politics, etc. Man became man in this understanding when he first made a primitive tool. The improvement of tools - from stone scrapers to computers - has created a special artificial environment for man, which largely determines his life.
We can say that modern man lives in the world of technology and culture, of which he is the creator.
Homo ludens (man playing). This concept was also introduced by J. Huizinge, who believes that not a single type of human cultural activity can do without game components - justice, war, philosophy, art, etc. Culture arises from play; a special symbolic sphere of human existence is created in it. It was not so much work that made a person a person, but rather free play time, where he could realize his fantasies, develop his imagination, create artistic values, communicate with others, and voluntarily accept rules common to all.
Homo religiosus (religious person).
Here man is understood primarily as “the image and likeness of God.” According to Christian ideas, man is a free being, endowed with the ability to choose between good and evil. The goal and realization of man is movement towards good, which is God. The essence of man, therefore, is manifested in faith; unbelief and evil are the path that leads a person away from his tribal essence.
And, for example, Ernest Kasirer called man a “symbolic animal”, Ernest Bloch “a dreaming man”, Norbert Wiener a “communicating man”, Martin Heidegger a “bored man”, who see the essence of man in the creation of symbols, the ability to dream, communicate, etc. .
Friedrich Nietzsche called man a “sick animal,” emphasizing his lack of initiative. Herding, the need for submission. Views the history of society as the gradual degeneration of man. Some modern philosophers talk about human aggressiveness, which manifests itself in endless wars and crimes, his irrationality, which leads to the destruction of the environment, the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction, overpopulation, man-made disasters, and ultimately to the death of all humanity.
“A man is a crazy monkey who was given a razor in his hands” - S. Lem.
Definitions of the concept “person” taken from philosophical dictionaries.
Human - this is the highest level of living organisms on Earth, a subject of socio-historical activity and culture.
Human – this is a biosocial being with articulate speech, consciousness, higher mental functions (abstract-logical thinking, logical memory, etc.), capable of creating tools and using them in the process of social labor.
Thus, the nature and essence of man are so deep and multifaceted that it is necessary to talk about the fundamental uncertainty and indefinability of the essence of man.
F.M. Dostoevsky said: “Man is a mystery...”.
Stages of human development table
Answers:
Stages of human development. 1) Period: Primitive, Chronology: 40 thousand.
years ago, Summary: The formation of man, the improvement of tools, the transition to agriculture and cattle breeding from hunting and gathering. 2) Period: Ancient World, Chronology: 4th century BC.
- 5th century AD, Summary: The split of society into rulers and the governed, the spread of slavery, cultural upsurge. 3) Period: Middle Ages, Chronology: 5th century AD. - 15th century AD, Summary: Establishment of the class system in Europe, religion, urbanization, and the formation of large feudal states became of great importance.
4) Period: Modern times, Chronology: 15th century - early 20th century, Summary: The formation of industrial capitalist civilization, the emergence of colonial empires, the bourgeois revolution, the industrial revolution, the development of the world market and its fall, production crises, social. contradictions, redivision of the world. 5) Period: Recent history, Chronology: the end of the 20th century - the present day, Summary: power rivalry, the invention of nuclear weapons, the spread of computers, changing the nature of work, restoring the integrity of the world market, the formation of a global system of infocommunications.
Following the Greek historical nest, new historical nests arose in which the formation of the servar (ancient) method of production took place: Etruscan, Carthaginian, Latin.
The ancient sociohistorical organisms taken together formed a new historical arena - the Mediterranean, to which the role of the center of world historical development passed.
With the emergence of a new world system, humanity as a whole rose to a new stage of historical development. There was a change of world eras: the era of the Ancient East was replaced by the Antique.
In subsequent development, in the 4th century. BC. The Middle Eastern and Mediterranean historical arenas taken together formed a sociological supersystem - the central historical space (central space), and as a result, became its two historical zones.
The Mediterranean zone was the historical center, the Middle East - the inner periphery.
Outside the central historical space there was an external periphery, which was divided into primitive (including pre-class) and political. But unlike the era of the Ancient East, the political periphery existed in ancient times in the form not of isolated historical nests, but of a significant number of historical arenas, between which various kinds of connections arose.
In the Old World, the East Asian, Indonesian, Indian, Central Asian arenas and, finally, the Great Steppe were formed, in the vastness of which nomadic empires arose and disappeared. In the New World in the 1st millennium BC. Andean and Mesoamerican historical arenas were formed.
The transition to ancient society was marked by significant progress in the productive forces.
But almost the entire increase in the productivity of social production was achieved not so much by improving technology as by increasing the share of workers in the population of society. This is a demographic way of increasing the level of productive forces.
In the pre-industrial era, an increase in the number of producers of material goods within a sociohistorical organism without an increase in the same proportion of its entire population could occur only in one way - through the influx of ready-made workers from outside, who did not have the right to have families and acquire offspring.
The constant influx of workers from outside into the composition of one or another sociohistorical organism necessarily presupposed an equally systematic removal of them from the composition of other sociological bodies.
The World History
All this was impossible without the use of direct violence. Workers brought in from outside could only be slaves. The considered method of increasing the productivity of social production was the establishment of exogenous (from the Greek exo - outside, outside) slavery. Only a constant influx of slaves from outside could make possible the emergence of an independent mode of production based on the labor of such dependent workers.
For the first time, this method of production was established only during the heyday of ancient society, and therefore it is usually called ancient. In Chapter VI “Basic and non-basic methods of production” it was called servar.
Thus, a necessary condition for the existence of ancient society was the continuous pumping of human resources from other sociohistorical organisms. And these other sociors had to belong to types different from this one, and preferably to a pre-class society.
The existence of a system of societies of the ancient type was impossible without the existence of a vast periphery, consisting primarily of barbarian sociohistorical organisms.
Continuous expansion, which was a necessary condition for the existence of server societies, could not continue indefinitely. Sooner or later it became impossible. The demographic method of increasing the productivity of social production, as well as the temporal one, was a dead end.
Ancient society, just like political society, was unable to transform into a society of a higher type. But if the political historical world continued to exist almost to the present day and after leaving the historical highway as an inferior one, then the ancient historical world disappeared forever. But, dying, ancient society passed the baton to other societies.
The transition of humanity to a higher stage of social development again occurred through what was called above formational super-elevation, or ultra-superiorization.
The era of the Middle Ages (VI-XV centuries).
The Western Roman Empire, undermined by internal contradictions, collapsed under the onslaught of the Germans. There was a superposition of Germanic pre-class demo-social organisms, which belonged to a proformation different from the protopolitan one, namely protomilitomagnar, on the fragments of the Western Roman geosocial organism. As a result, on the same territory, some people lived as part of demosocial pre-class organisms, while others lived as part of a half-destroyed class geosocial organism.
Such coexistence of two qualitatively different socio-economic and other social structures could not last too long. There had to be either the destruction of demosocial structures and the victory of geosocial ones, or the disintegration of geosocial ones and the triumph of demosocial ones, or, finally, a synthesis of both.
On the territory of the lost Western Roman Empire, what historians call the Romano-Germanic synthesis took place. As a result, a new, more progressive mode of production was born - feudal and, accordingly, a new socio-economic formation.
A Western European feudal system emerged, which became the center of world-historical development.
The ancient era was replaced by a new one - the era of the Middle Ages. The Western European world system existed as one of the zones of the preserved, but at the same time rebuilt, central historical space. This space included the Byzantine and Middle Eastern zones as an internal periphery.
The latter as a result of the Arab conquests of the 7th-8th centuries. expanded significantly to include part of the Byzantine zone and became an Islamic zone. Then the expansion of the central historical space began at the expense of the territory of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, filled with pre-class sociohistorical organisms, which also belonged to the same proformation as the German pre-class societies - protomilitomagnar.
These societies, some under the influence of Byzantium, others - Western Europe, began to transform and turned into class sociohistorical organisms.
But if ultra-superiorization occurred on the territory of Western Europe and a new formation appeared - feudal, then a process took place here, which was called above literalization.
As a result, two similar socio-economic paraformations arose, which, without going into details, can be conditionally characterized as parafeudal (from the Greek.
pair - near, about): one included the sociors of Northern Europe, the other - Central and Eastern. Two new peripheral zones of the central historical space emerged: Northern European and Central-Eastern European, which included Rus'. In the outer periphery, primitive societies and the same political historical arenas continued to exist as in the ancient era.
As a result of the Mongol conquest (XIII century), North-Western Rus' and North-Eastern Rus', taken together, found themselves torn out of the central historical space.
The Central-Eastern European zone narrowed to Central European. After getting rid of the Tatar-Mongol yoke (XV century), Northern Rus', which later received the name Russia, returned to the central historical space, but as a special peripheral zone - Russian, which later turned into Eurasian.
Modern times (1600-1917).
On the verge of the XV and XVI centuries. capitalism began to take shape in Western Europe. The Western European feudal world system was replaced by the Western European capitalist system, which became the center of world-historical development. The Middle Ages were followed by modern times. Capitalism developed in this era both inward and outward.
The first was expressed in the maturation and establishment of the capitalist structure, in the victory of the bourgeois socio-political revolutions (Dutch 16th century, English 17th century, Great French 18th century).
Already with the emergence of cities (10th-12th centuries), Western European society embarked on the only path that was capable of ensuring, in principle, the unlimited development of productive forces - the growth of labor productivity through the improvement of production technology.
The technical method of ensuring an increase in the productivity of social production finally prevailed after the industrial revolution, which began in the last third of the 18th century.
Capitalism arose as a result of the natural development of the society that preceded it in only one place on the globe - in Western Europe. As a result, humanity was divided into two main historical worlds: the capitalist world and the non-capitalist world, which included primitive (including pre-class), political and parafeudal societies.
Along with the development of capitalism in depth, it developed in breadth.
The capitalist world system gradually pulled all peoples and countries into its orbit of influence. The central historical space has turned into a global historical space (worldspace). Along with the formation of the world historical space, capitalism spread throughout the world and the formation of a global capitalist market.
The whole world began to turn into capitalist. For all socio-historical organisms that have lagged behind in their development, no matter at what stage of evolution they lingered: primitive, politaristic or parafeudal, only one path of development became possible - to capitalism.
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Vitaly Asher
The history of humanity as a result of the development of desires
Reflecting on the solution to the purpose of human existence, scientists and philosophers have put forward various contradictory hypotheses, and yet the problem remains insoluble - is humanity developing according to a certain program or is its path spontaneous and has no final goal.
There are several approaches to interpreting the historical process.
History is considered as a sequence of events, dynasties, wars and legislations. History is usually taught in this form in schools.
Widely known Marxist economic approach, according to which the course of history is determined by the method of production of goods.
The method of production entails a change in the country's social institutions - its ideology, ethics, morality.
Sigmund Freud founded a method that explains history as the result of the suppression of subconscious impulses. The approach links the forms of culture as derivatives of the success of impulse control.
O. Spengler and A. Toynbee consider schemes for the development of civilization.
The lifespan of a civilization, in their opinion, depends on the ideas and ideals on which it is based. Such a comprehension of history seeks to reveal the internal sources of development of societies, trying to discover their inherent features.
The progress of science and technological achievements have not led humanity to confidence in its future. On the contrary, our lives are filled with a premonition of disaster; we are aware of the environmental danger threatening the planet. In this inconsistency of existence, something mysterious is hidden, a certain secret of a person’s destiny, when the growth of egoistic desire stands in the way of his boundless desire for the improvement of existence and creative growth.
He, mastering the laws of nature, expanding the boundaries of knowledge of the universe, tries in vain to understand the meaning of his existence.
In the modern world, the contradictory properties of human nature and the versatility of his nature are more noticeable.
Logical processing and generalization of factual material from observations and empirical research allows one to penetrate into the depth of the content and identify patterns of development. In our description of the historical process, we tried to use a macro-anthropological approach based on the science of Kabbalah. This approach to studying the interaction of the “man-nature” system is currently gaining great importance as an interdisciplinary means of studying integral phenomena of nature, society, group and individual.
We can say that the subject of our research is the study and description of the most effective forms of interaction between people in society, which would most optimally contribute to the process of natural development of man, nature and society, leading to the creation of conditions for the formation and development of an optimal form of coexistence of external and internal forces of development nature.
New trends in understanding the historical process
Humanity develops gradually, and the force of its development is the growing egoism in it.
If egoism had not developed in people, the past generation would have been no different from the present, just as we observe this in animals. Selfish desire is the essential nature of creation on all its levels - it is the only thing that was created in the act of creation of the universe. We called it “the desire to receive pleasure” or “egoism.”
Egoistic desire evolves only in man, while in all other parts of creation (inanimate, plant, animal) it is unchanged.
It is the growing desires for obtaining new pleasures and finding ways to satisfy them that determine the level of development of civilization and everything that we call “progress”. Thanks to the fact that our desires are constantly growing, humanity moves forward. Selfishness develops along the time axis gradually and incessantly: it increases quantitatively, and as it grows it turns into qualitatively different desires.
Macro-anthropology divides the entire complex of human desires into five levels, each of which develops its own type of pleasure:
primary desires are bodily (food, shelter, procreation);
2. desire for wealth;
3. desire for honor, power and glory;
4. thirst for knowledge;
5. spiritual level - the desire to comprehend the meaning of life, the plan of creation.
These levels consistently manifest themselves in humans over thousands of years and form the stages of human development.
Primary desires are also called “animal desires” because they are also inherent in animals. Even being in complete isolation, a person experiences hunger and sexual desire.
Desires for wealth, power and knowledge are already “human desires”, since they arise under the influence of the social environment, and in order to satisfy them, a person must be in a society of his own kind, which allows the formation of classes and all kinds of hierarchical structures.
In the light of this concept, a review of such areas of human activity as culture, education, science and technology leads us to the conclusion that it is what develops in man selfishness gave birth to all our ideas, inventions and innovations.
In essence, they are only “technical tools”, “service facilities” created by man solely to satisfy the needs that arise under pressure desires to receive .
Development framework
The entire development of humanity is similar to the development of one person going through the stages of childhood, adolescence and maturity - when he actually uses the potential originally inherent in himself.
Let us examine the characteristic differences of each of the three stages.
First of all, it should be remembered that the development of humanity is based on the development and actualization of internal needs, i.e.
on ego growth. The larger the ego, the greater the need, which is a stimulus for the development of intelligence and the ability to deeper perceive the surrounding reality.
Let us briefly consider the stages of development of history. The dates here are given approximately, only to outline the main stages:
1 .Primary desires( 4500 – 1200 BC e. )
4500–2400 BC e. Civilization Sumer and Akad
2000–1200 BC e. Babylonian Empire.
The Age of the Patriarchs
During the first period, humanity as a whole was immersed exclusively in immediate bodily desires. More developed human desires, striving for power, honors and knowledge, were revealed only in single individuals. Therefore, the development achieved at this stage represents a stock of accumulated impressions from the difficulties of existence and nothing more. Over the centuries, humanity has evolved unconsciously.
At the end of this period, Abraham was born - the first to comprehend the integral picture of nature.
Its achievement symbolizes the transition to the next stage of development.
2 . The pursuit of wealth(1200 BC – 200 AD)
1200–600 Assyrian Empire. Founding of Israel
500–300 Persian Empire
400–300 Macedonian Empire
100 BC–200 AD
The World History
The Roman Empire. The Birth of Christianity
During the second period the power grows selfishness, as a result of which humanity is gradually acquiring the structure of peoples and states. The peak of this development occurs at a time when great empires - Greece and Rome - flourish and collapse, and the world is engulfed in wars.
The desire for honor, power and glory (200-1500)
200–600 decline of civilization
600–1000 Muslim Empire
800–1100 dark period of the Middle Ages
1100–1300 Crusades
1300–1500 Renaissance
New ideas don't appear out of nowhere. They grow only on well-prepared intellectual soil. The achievements of scientific thought, lost during the decline of Greek civilization, were revived in the 12th-15th centuries thanks to the works of Abraham Bar Khiy, Ibn Latif, Raymond Lull, Immanuel Bonfils, Pico della Mirandola.
At this time, important scientific works were translated into Latin from Hebrew, Greek and Arabic.
Ibn Litif and Lull tried to present a unified system of sciences.
Between 1320 and 1520, Italy became a center of humanistic renewal. Leonardo da Vinci, Bellini, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Titian, Michelangelo and others were able to realize the new aspirations of society.
The Renaissance freed people from old ideas about the world, forced them to think differently and change the established order of things.
At the turn of these stages, the rapid growth of science begins.
4. Thirst for knowledge (1500–1995)
1500–1700 Reformation. Science and technology
1700–1800 Growth of industry
1800–1900 Industrial Revolution
1900–2000 World Wars
This period is characterized by the accelerated development of the desire for knowledge. The revolutionary works of Spinoza and René Descartes contributed to the birth of modern science.
It was at this time that the religious reformer Martin Luther appeared, a critical thinker whose ideas excited Europe at that time.
The new worldview was beneficial for the development of classical mechanics and technology.
Discoveries followed one after another, so that almost over the last two centuries the material world around us has changed beyond recognition. However, technological progress has not led to the desired solution to the problems of global society.
5.Spiritual level (1995–)
Around 1995, the need for spiritual fulfillment began to manifest itself in humanity. Spiritual need is not a religious concept.
This is the need to maintain balance with nature. And since nature is altruistic, but man is not, a discrepancy arises, which man feels as suffering.
Reaching the top of the pyramid is not the end of development, but the beginning of a new world. This is the transition of the system to the next floor, where the vector of forces in a person changes and opportunities open up that he did not even suspect about. Those. humanity, having realized the last need, does not move into a state in which major needs disappear.
On the contrary, having realized the last egoistic need, it moves into a state of continuous realization of the first altruistic need.
Search Lectures
STAGES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
It has become generally accepted to divide the historical path of mankind into:
1. The primitive era;
2. History of the Ancient World;
3. History of the Middle Ages;
New time (New history);)
5. Contemporary times Contemporary history).
Length primitive era is determined by more than 1.5 million.
years. During this era, the modern type of man emerged (about 40-30 thousand years ago), tools gradually improved, and the transition from hunting, fishing and gathering to agriculture and cattle breeding began.
History countdown Ancient world has been going on since the emergence of states (IV-III millennium BC). This was the time of the split of society into rulers and the governed, the haves and the have-nots, and the widespread spread of slavery (although it did not have great economic importance in all ancient states).
Open Library - open library of educational information
The slave system reached its peak during the period of antiquity (1st millennium BC - beginning of AD), the rise of civilizations Ancient Greece And Ancient Rome .
In recent years, the attempts of mathematician D.T. have gained some popularity.
Fomenko, to offer his own chronology of the history of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages. They argue that the reconstruction by historians of many events that occurred earlier than the 16th-17th centuries, before the widespread use of printing, is not indisputable and other options are possible.
The Middle Ages determined by time frame V–XVII centuries
1st period era (V-XI centuries) marked by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the emergence of a new type of social relations - the establishment of the class system in Europe (each class has its own rights and responsibilities).
Characteristic is the predominance of subsistence farming and the special role of religion.
2nd period (mid-11th - end of 15th century)- the formation of large feudal states and the growing importance of cities - centers of crafts, trade, and spiritual life, which became increasingly secular in nature.
III period (XV - mid-XVII century)- early modern times, the beginning of the decomposition of the feudal system.
Characteristic are the creation of colonial empires, the development of technical and economic activities, the spread of manufacturing, and the complication of the social structure of society, which conflicts with class division. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation mark a new stage in spiritual life.
In conditions of growing social and religious contradictions, central power is strengthened and absolute monarchies arise.
Civilizations of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages within theories of "stages of growth" ( E. Toffler) are not differentiated , they are considered as "traditional society" the basis of the economy, life, culture, family structure and politics was the land, natural and semi-natural agricultural and craft farming.
In all these countries, life was organized around the village settlement, there was a simple division of labor and clearly defined castes and classes: nobles, priests, warriors, slaves or serfs, and an authoritarian character of power.
Exceptions to the rules described above are considered as special variants of a single phenomenon - agrarian civilization.
Modern era - the era of the formation and establishment of industrial capitalist civilization.
1st period (from the middle of the 17th century)- a time of revolutions that destroyed the foundations of the class system (the first of them was the revolution in England in the 1640-1660s).
The Age of Enlightenment was of great importance, associated with the spiritual emancipation of man and the acquisition of faith in the power of reason.
2nd period comes after Great French Revolution(1789-1794). Industrial Revolution, which began in England, covers the countries of continental Europe, where the formation of capitalist relations is proceeding at a rapid pace.
This is a time of rapid growth of colonial empires, the world market, and the system of international division of labor. With the completion of the formation of large bourgeois states, the ideology of nationalism and national interest is established in most of them.
III period (from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century)- the rapid development of industrial civilization “in breadth” is slowing down due to its development of new territories.
The capacity of world markets turns out to be insufficient to absorb the growing volumes of products. The time of global crises of overproduction and the growth of social contradictions in industrial countries.
Intensification of the struggle for the redivision of the world.
Contemporaries perceived this time as a period of crisis of industrial, capitalist civilization. The indicator was the First World War of 1914-1918. and the 1917 revolution in Russia.
Periodization and the term Recent history are considered controversial in modern science. For Soviet historians and philosophers, the revolution of 1917 marked the transition to the era of the formation of the communist formation; it was with it that the advent of modern times was associated.
Proponents of other approaches to the periodization of history used the term “Modern Time” to mean a period associated with the history of modernity in the twentieth century.
Within the framework of the history of modern times, it stands out II main period.
1st period (first half of the twentieth century) - early modern times - the process of deepening the crisis of industrial civilization (the Great Crisis of 1929-1932) brought the economies of developed countries to the brink of collapse.
Power rivalry, the struggle for colonies and markets for products led to World War II of 1939-1945. The colonial system of European powers is collapsing.
The conditions of the Cold War are breaking the unity of the world market. With the invention of nuclear weapons, the crisis of industrial civilization began to threaten the destruction of humanity.
2nd period (second half - end of the twentieth century) - qualitative changes associated with changes in the nature of social, socio-political development of the leading countries of the world.
With the spread of computers and industrial robots the nature of work is changing, The central figure of production becomes the intellectual worker.
In developed countries it is developing socially oriented market economy, The nature of human life and leisure is changing. Integration processes are underway in the international arena, the creation of common economic spaces (Western European, North American), the development of processes of globalization of economic life and the creation of a global system of information communications.
Self-test questions:
What functions does historical science perform, what methods and principles does it use when studying historical facts and events?
2. What main stages has historical science gone through in its development? Name its leading schools and largest representatives.
3. What options for the periodization of historical development can you name? Which one seems most reasonable to you?
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This article will discuss the main stages of world history: from ancient times to our time. We will briefly review the main features of each stage and identify the events/reasons that marked the transition to the next stage of development.
Epochs of human development: general structure
Scientists usually distinguish five main stages in the development of mankind, and the transition from one to another was marked by fundamental changes in the structure of human society.
- Primitive society (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic)
- Ancient world
- Middle Ages
- New time
- Modern times
Primitive society: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic
Paleolithic- Old Stone Age, the longest stage. The boundaries of the stage are considered to be the use of primitive stone tools (about 2.5 million years ago) and before the beginning of agriculture (about 10 thousand years BC). People lived mainly by gathering and hunting.
Mesolithic- Middle Stone Age, from 10 thousand years BC to 6 thousand years BC. Covers the period from the last ice age to the rise in global sea levels. At this time, stone tools become smaller, which makes their scope wider. Fishing is developing more actively, presumably at this time the domestication of the dog as a hunting assistant took place
Neolithic- the new Stone Age does not have clear time boundaries, since different cultures went through this stage at different times. Characterized by the transition from gathering to production, i.e. agriculture and hunting, the Neolithic ends with the beginning of metal processing, i.e. the beginning of the Iron Age.
Ancient world
This is the period between primitive society and the Middle Ages in Europe. Although the period of the ancient world can include civilizations in which writing arose, for example, Sumerian, and this is about 5.5 thousand years BC, usually the term “ancient world” or “classical antiquity” means ancient Greek and Roman history that runs from about 770 BC to about 476 AD (the year the Roman Empire fell).
The ancient world is famous for its civilizations - Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, the Persian Empire, the Arab Caliphate, the Chinese Empire, the Mongol Empire.
The main features of the ancient world are a sharp leap in culture, associated primarily with the development of agriculture, the formation of cities, the army, and trade. If in primitive society there were cults and deities, then during the Ancient World religion developed and philosophical movements emerged.
Middle Ages or Middle Ages
Regarding the time frame, scientists disagree, since the end of this period in Europe did not mean its end throughout the world. Therefore, it is generally accepted that the Middle Ages lasted from approximately the 5th century (collapse of the Roman Empire) AD until the 15-16th or even the 18th century (technological breakthrough)
Distinctive features of the period are the development of trade, lawmaking, stable development of technology, and the strengthening of the influence of cities. At the same time, there was a transition from slavery to feudalism. Sciences develop, the power of religion increases, which leads to crusades and other wars based on religion.
New time
The transition to a new time is characterized by a qualitative leap that humanity has made in the field of technology. Thanks to this breakthrough, agricultural civilizations, whose prosperity was built on the presence of a large territory that made it possible to stock up on provisions, are moving to industry, to fundamentally new conditions of life and consumption. At this time, Europe, which became the source of this technological breakthrough, is rising, a humanistic attitude towards the world is developing, and there is an active rise in science and art.
Modern times
Modern times include the period since 1918, i.e. since the First World War. The period is characterized by an increasing pace of globalization, the increasing role of information in the life of society, two world wars and many revolutions. In general, modern times are characterized as a stage in which individual states realize their global influence and the planetary scale of existence. Not only the interests of individual countries and rulers, but also global existence come to the fore.
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