Leon Trotsky. Three Concepts of the Russian Revolution (1939). Political revolutions IV. Evolutionary and revolutionary theories of the development of society
Non-Marxist concepts of revolutions
Non-Marxist studies of the revolution are very extensive, although, in my opinion, they do not differ in depth. In the second half of the 19th century, the smooth development of society, without leaps, was taken for granted; revolutions seemed to be aberrations. This time corresponded to "social realism" in the social sciences (O. Comte, G. Spencer, E. Durkheim), which likened society to an organism. Evolution is the normal state of an organism. Revolution is a disease of the organism. She is barren and useless.
The 20th century brought an understanding, if not the inevitability of committing, then the frequent observability of the facts of revolutions. Attempts to uncover their causes followed, which is impossible in principle without reference to the basis, i.e., outside the materialistic understanding of history. Therefore, the extremely numerous concepts of the revolution of the 20th century are very monotonous.
The beginning of the "sociology of revolution" (P. Sorokin's term) was laid in the first quarter of the century, and since the 1960s, the publication of books, mainly in the USA, has taken on the character of an avalanche: B. Adams - "The Theory of Social Revolution" (1913); G. Lebon - "Psychology of the Revolution" (1913); P. Sorokin - "Sociology of the Revolution" (1925); L. Edwards - "The Natural History of the Revolution" (1927); K. Brinton - "Anatomy of the Revolution" (1938); J. Pitti - "The Process of Revolution" (1938); X. Arendt - "On the Revolution" (1963); S. Huntington - "Political Order in Changing Societies" (1968); C. Johnson - "Revolution and the Social System" (1964) and "Revolutionary Change" (1968); P. Calvert - "Revolution" (1970) and "Politicians, power and revolution" (1983); S. Wagner - "The End of the Revolution: a new assessment of today's uprisings" (1971); M. Ridgei - "Strategy of political revolution" (1973); W. F. Wertheim - "Evolution and Revolution: Wills of Liberation" (1974); M. Hegopian - "The Phenomenon of Revolution" (1975); A. Cohen - "Theories of Revolution: An Introduction" (1975); T. Skokpol - "States and social revolutions" (1978); S. Taylor - "Social Science and Revolutions" (1984), etc.
Some authors single out behavioral (P. Sorokin), psychological (J. Davis, T. Garr), structural (T. Skokpol) and political (C. Tilly) concepts within the “sociology of revolution”; others are political and legal (K. Brinton, X. Arendt, C. Tilly), psychological (G. Lebon, P. Sorokin, J. Davis) and socio-structural (C. Johnson, B. Moore, T. Skokpol) . Other classifications are possible, but in general the boundaries here are very conditional.
It is common to consider the psychological or managerial aspect of the revolution, or both. Revolution is derived from behavior of people or from management needs people, but not from the patterns of development societies because they are not recognized as such. From the point of view of the founder of the "sociology of revolution" P. A. Sorokin (1889-1968), revolutions occur as a result of the suppression of the basic instincts of people - food, sexual, self-preservation, etc.
Symptomatic is the title of the book by the American sociologist T. Garr - "Why do people rebel" (1970). With this (also important) question, the “sociology of revolution” replaces another – why is society changing?
The “social nominalism” prevailing in the 20th century in the West closes the possibility of distinguishing in social life material component, irreducible to people living in society, and determining their will and consciousness - production relations.
Attempts to overcome it ("structural" theories) lead to the allocation as the basis of society ideal phenomena (values, norms, customs, even myths) or derivatives from them (power, legitimacy, balance), that is, they still do not go beyond the superstructure.
Recognition of their variability is not accompanied by recognition of the direction of change. Accordingly, there are no criteria for progressive or regressive changes. The main features of a revolution are not the emergence of a new, progressive quality (at least in the political system), but suddenness, illegality, and violent character. Typical definitions: revolution - "illegal change in the conditions of legality"; "changing constitutional conditions by illegal means"; "abrupt sudden change in the position of political power"; "sudden illegal mass violence aimed at overthrowing the political order", etc.
Therefore, palace coups (F. Gross, J. Pitti, C. Johnson), peasant uprisings (C. Johnson, M. Hegopian) and even counter-revolutions (M. Ridgei) fall into the number of revolutions. Changes within the existing legal system (the coming to power of a new social force by winning elections; the transformation of society on the initiative of the ruling class) are not considered revolutions: a tangible step back compared to the position of A. Ferrand.
The results of revolutions are also sought in the sphere of ideas (the realization of the idea of freedom by H. Arendt, the change in the dominant system of values and myths by S. Huntington, D. Yoder, etc.) and in the sphere of management (the change of elites, the modernization of political institutions by S. Huntington, etc.). Sometimes a revolution is considered, in principle, an inconclusive phenomenon (K. Brinton).
Another common drawback is the vagueness of the relationship between revolution and evolution: either a complete break or a complete merger.
As a rule, if the revolution is investigated, then only the revolution is investigated: there is no need to explain evolution. If this question is posed, then the commonality of the two forms of progress is understood only as the inclusion of revolutions in the composition of evolution, an example of which is given by WF Wertheim's book "Evolution and Revolution: Waves of Liberation" (1974). Revolutions, along with wars, are “periods of acute political conflict”, i.e. a special part of the evolutionary process, and not a transition to a new stage of evolution. From uprisings, "revolutions" (or "revolutionary movements", the author does not distinguish between these concepts) differ only in the degree of danger to the existing system. Conflicts of any severity are harmful to society, and their appearance is not fatal, therefore it is useful and possible to prevent revolutions.
The application of the approaches of "sociology of revolution" to the real revolutions of Modern and Contemporary times gives the following results.
From the nominalist fragmentation of the social revolution into many unique events, none of which is in itself a social revolution, the conclusion follows that there is no social revolution as such. Getting used to the era, the desire to look at revolutions through the eyes of their participants leads to the same conclusion: it turns out that none of them thought about a social revolution, because they thought differently than we think. Emphasizing the continuity in the development of society turns the revolution into a minor episode of violence. Emphasizing the suddenness and brevity of revolutions abolishes the era of social revolution: the duration of the transformations is recognized as proof of their evolutionary nature. Finally, the reduction of revolutions to a violent struggle for power or the realization of ideas should prove their uselessness for progress and the priority of reforms.
Here is a typical passage from the pen of the famous German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf (b. 1929): “Everywhere, in France and in Russia, in Cuba and Nicaragua ... the revolution invariably had two consequences: the traces of democracy were very soon erased by new dictatorships, and economic conditions worsened, remaining unenviable for decades. It seems that revolutions create as many, if not more, problems than they solve,” etc. True, on the next page, the author’s mood changes dramatically: “To the extent that the purpose of revolutions is to eliminate the old regime, completed revolutions do not may be unsuccessful. They are successful almost by definition. The unexpected insight of R. Dahrendorf, which runs counter to the previously stated position, is explained by the fact that in this case he writes about the 1989 coups in Eastern Europe that brought the bourgeoisie to power. The successes of the bourgeoisie always make its ideologists receptive to the ideas of progress.
However, bourgeois upheavals "from below" are not all that frequent, so it is usual for non-Marxist sociology to oppose revolution and reform, which are clearly preferred. The study of revolutions then turns into a search for "a recipe for preventing a revolution that has long since won."
Strictly speaking, with such an understanding of the revolution, this concept itself turns out to be unnecessary. It makes sense only with a stage approach to history - as a transition from one stage to another, more progressive one. But non-Marxist sociology avoids stages, reducing all social phenomena to undirected changes.
The rejection of the scientific use of the concept of "revolution" is the final conclusion of the book "Revolution" (1970) by the English sociologist Peter Calvert. For him, this concept decomposes into four others - "rebellion", "changes in the state structure", "violence" and "millennialism" (the expectation of a "thousand-year kingdom of the righteous", which can be translated as "utopianism" and "messiahism" together). At the same time, suggests P. Calvert, the concept of "revolution" could be used as a synonym for "social dissolution (dissolution)", but immediately dismisses this idea. He dismisses it not because revolution as a form of progress is incompatible with disintegration (there is no such formulation of the question), but because complete disintegration does not happen because of the ability of people to adapt with greater or lesser success to the conditions of "annihilation".
P. Calvert's position is very consistent. Indeed, non-Marxist sociology, in the analysis of revolutions, may well make do with the concepts he enumerates. However, it is not the concept of "revolution" that is false, but sociology, which refuses it because of its inability to explain the phenomenon it denotes.
The opposition of reforms and revolution is the main idea of the work of Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994) " open society and his enemies" (1945). Although chapter 19 is entitled "Social Revolution", Popper's book does not belong to the "sociology of revolution". He has no concept of revolution. He has a concept of the uselessness of the socialist revolution as the forcible seizure of power by industrial workers in order to get rid of poverty. Precisely this, according to Popper, is Marx's conception of the socialist revolution. Therefore, if it is proved that the workers can get rid of poverty without a socialist revolution, within the framework of capitalism, there will be no need for a socialist revolution. This is what Popper proves. “If the workers are convinced that their lives are getting better under capitalism, they may prefer gradual reforms to the suppression of the ruling class and “total victory” over it.”
Kind of popper breaking in open door. No one argues that capitalism exists to this day and that it exists not only because of police violence, but also because of the improvement in the life of the wage-working class (characteristically, the nominalist Popper speaks of "workers" and not of "class"). The problem is different. Is this improvement irreversible? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to answer another - due to what it was achieved? Popper greatly facilitated his task by refusing to talk about historical patterns and reducing history to the actions of people, but he still could not fail to notice the problem of the source of capitalism's strength.
Popper is well aware that Marxists counter his argument with a counterargument - the prosperity of the West is a consequence of the robbery of the colonies, where poverty not only does not decrease, but increases. Therefore, it is interesting to consider his answer. Popper calls this counter-argument an "auxiliary hypothesis" to the "original theory of impoverishment" and considers it the result of ideological irritation of Marxists who do not want to accept the fact that capitalism is improving. First, Popper notes, as he believes, the contradiction between the views of Marx, who accused the capitalist system of pauperization of the workers, and the views of Engels and Lenin, who some time later accused it of bourgeoisizing the workers. Popper believes that the capitalist system cannot be blamed for both. His own attitude towards the system betrays the ironic - "it is still accused!" There is nothing to blame the capitalist system, says Popper: “Although the poverty into which colonization plunged the natives is one of the blackest pages in the history of our civilization, it cannot be argued that the poverty of the natives has increased since the time of Marx. On the contrary, their situation has improved markedly. At the same time, if the auxiliary hypothesis, as well as the original theory in question, were true, then the impoverishment of the inhabitants of the colonies would be very strong.
It is not Popper's position that is striking: you do not expect anything else from him. The level of argumentation is striking - no facts, no figures, no dates. The only gap in the ideological armor that is open to scientific controversy is the final phrase.
So, if the impoverishment of the inhabitants of the colonies were very strong, then the auxiliary hypothesis, like the original theory discussed, would be true. Over the past 30 years, the global income share of the poorest 20% the globe decreased from 2.3% to 1.4% (20% of the richest increased from 70% to 85%; respectively, their incomes are correlated as 1: 75) . A consequence of this inequality, in particular, is the fact that in the "third world" every 4 seconds a person dies of hunger (data from the Second World Congress on Hunger, 2002) .
The latest data for Russia: in the first half of 2004, the richest 20% received 46.6% of all income (the "top" 10% - 30% of income), increasing their financial well-being by 0.3% over the year; 20% of the poorest - 5.4% ("bottom" 10% - 2% of income). The “decile coefficient” is 1:15. This, although high (1:10 in the West is considered a sign of social disadvantage), but not amazing, the gap is caused by the sad fact that the “top” 10% of Russians are not so rich. In Moscow, where real wealth is concentrated, the difference in income between the "top" and "bottom" 1% of the population is 1:100 (!).
I don't know what "very severe impoverishment" means from Popper's point of view, but there can be little doubt that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
A similar process is underway in the West. In 1976, the richest 1% of US citizens owned 19% of the country's wealth; in 1995 - 40%. The “bottom” 90% are 51% and 29%, respectively. Citing these figures, the American scholar Robert Stone writes: "Since capitalism is not dead, the heart of Marxism is also alive."
There is, in fact, nothing to argue about - except, perhaps, the problem of "tyranny". It should be noted that Popper is by no means an opponent of violence. He justifies not only - in the spirit of Tocqueville - the violent ("revolutionary") overthrow of "tyranny", but also the use of violence to defend "democracy". He does not single out any other forms of government, except for “tyranny” and “democracy”, as well as other problems related to power, which would be strange if it were not for the stated position: “It is high time for us to understand that the question“ Who should have power in the state?“ is insignificant compared to the questions “ How exercised power?“ and “ How much power concentrated in the hands of those who possess it?'” .
Such a formulation of the question is illogical from the point of view of those who does not possess power: if they want to know How exercised power and how much power concentrated in the hands of those who possess it, they must also know Who is in power. But such a formulation of the question is logical from the point of view of those who already has power: the question of power "according to Popper" excludes the change of power. The existing power can be exercised in different forms but it is eternal. Without knowing who rules us, we will not be able to remove him from power. All that the subordinates can achieve is concessions from the irremovable masters of life. “It is possible to create conditions for a worker no worse than for a racehorse, however, from this and property he will have no more than a racehorse,” wrote G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936).
Questions about the form of exercise of power - democracy and tyranny - in my opinion, are important, but secondary. “When Dr. Popper divides all governments into tyranny and democracy, he adopts a principle of classification that does not correspond to the facts,” wrote the English Marxist Maurice Cornforth (1909-1980). – Was the rule of the Tudors in England, for example, a tyranny or a democracy?… The general classification proposed by Popper is far from being exact. And its main shortcoming becomes apparent when considering how individual governments were actually created and what they did. Thus, for example, the ancient tyranny of Peisistratus in Athens, in its social base and functions, was very different from the modern tyranny established by Hitler in Germany, since Peisistratus's actions were aimed at undermining the power of the former ruling class, while Hitler's actions were aimed at providing the ruling class with unlimited power". Therefore, the overthrow of another tyranny, contrary to Popper, may be a counter-revolution, and the overthrow of another democracy may be a revolution.
I cannot fail to quote another quotation from Cornforth's book, referring not only to Popper, but also to the "sociology of the revolution." “Dr. Popper warns us that as soon as individuals are given any dictatorial powers, they tend to retain these powers, expand them and abuse them to the detriment of democracy. Indeed, the experience of many revolutions confirms this warning... This process is now regarded by many as an inviolable law of the revolution: "the revolution devours its children". What are we to do with this? Should we, for this reason, abandon any democratic attempt to hasten a fundamental change in the social system? Dr. Popper's arguments are not new, and if the English had listened to them three hundred years ago, we would have continued to enjoy the fruits of the "divine right" of kings.
The assets of the "sociology of revolution" include descriptions psychological or political phenomena occurring on the eve of and during the revolution. Thus, the American sociologist James Davis in his work “On the Theory of Revolution” (1962) believes that revolutions do not occur during the most acute crises and not during a period of steady recovery, but in a situation where a period of growth that inspired people’s hopes is replaced by a sharp decline. A sharp change from hope to hopelessness leads to revolution. Such was the situation in Russia before 1917. Psychological analysis sets the direction for research and can help predict revolutions.
This observation seems to be correct - the psychological antinomy of "despair-hope", which was the subject of disagreements between Bakunin and Kropotkin, is being overcome. If you look deeper than J. Davis looks, then you can see the basis of this psychological situation - the historical moment when the old production relations, which used to be a stimulus, became a brake on development.
Another American sociologist, Charles Tilly, gives a description of the course of events in the revolution: the emergence of the opposition - the mobilization of supporters by it - the government's attempts to counteract - the opposition establishes control over part of the ministries or regions - the struggle to expand control - victory, defeat or compromise between the opposition and the government - the restoration of a single order . The result is not even sociology, but a technology of revolution, formally correct, but extremely abstract.
Those aspects of the revolution that require not description, but explanation, non-Marxist sociology considers unknowable. The Czech sociologist Petr Sztompka, in his book The Sociology of Social Change (1993), concludes the chapter on revolutions with a small pessimistic section, "What We Don't Know About Revolutions." We do not know, from his point of view, "five riddles or paradoxes", namely:
- causes of revolutions;
- the reasons for the behavior of people during the revolution ("revolutionary mobilization");
– causes and depth of continuity between different revolutions;
- the reasons for the discrepancy between the results of revolutions and the expectations of people;
- predictability of revolutions.
Problems are not only unresolved, they are unsolvable. This is due to the fact that the subjects of the historical process are people who make decisions. Revolutions depend on billions of decisions made by people "with a unique biography" and "unpredictable in actions." History is the sum of individual actions, so the scientific study of revolutions will help the "defenders of the old order" to prevent them. The result is "a paradoxical conclusion: the theory of revolution is meaningless, because if it is able to predict, then the predictions will be refuted, if it is not capable, then this is not a theory at all."
The impasse is obvious, and the author did not comprehend all its hopelessness: if the position of “social nominalism” is pursued consistently, then not only the theory of revolution, but any study of society is meaningless: history is created by unpredictable individuals who, having learned the results of research, will do the opposite.
A great success in the study of revolutions was the discovery revolutions in the forms of economic activity (technical revolutions) - agricultural, industrial, scientific and technological revolutions - which served as the basis for the most famous non-Marxist periodization of history (agrarian - industrial - post-industrial society) and related concepts of modernization - the only widely recognized non-Marxist scheme for the progressive development of mankind.
This discovery was caused by the need to comprehend the technical revolution, called the scientific and technological revolution (STR). The term was introduced by the famous English physicist John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971), who also created the periodization of history according to the stages of technological development: (1) primitive society - (2) agricultural society– (3) industrial society – (4) society of the future. Transitions from stage to stage - revolution: agrarian IV-II (as in Bernal. - D. 3.) millennium BC. e.; industrial XVIII-XIX centuries; scientific and technical of the XX century.
To designate the latter, Bernal also uses the terms "second industrial revolution" and "scientific-industrial revolution"; and his like-minded, English physicist and writer Charles Percy Snow (1905-1980) in the famous work "Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" (1959) - "scientific revolution", but the name "scientific and technological revolution" was recognized. The term "scientific revolution" later came to mean a "revolution in knowledge", including the emergence of science in the 17th century.
The transition from gathering and hunting to farming and pastoralism, from an appropriating economy to a producing one, was first described as a revolution in the work of the English archaeologist Veer Gordon Childe (1892-1957) Man Creates Himself (1936). But the idea of this “Neolithic”, as W. G. Childe called it, revolution became widespread only after the Second World War and the appearance of the works of J. Bernal. Subsequently, this upheaval became known as the "agricultural" or "agrarian" revolution. The term "agricultural revolution" was also used by V. G. Childe, but to denote the transition not to agriculture in general, but to plow, field agriculture.
The next revolution was the transition from manual production to machine production, which is called the industrial or industrial revolution. The term originated in the 19th century. It was first introduced into circulation in the book "History of political economy in Europe from ancient times to the present day" (1837) by the French economist Jerome Adolphe Blanqui (1798-1854), brother of the famous revolutionary. But the real understanding of the role of this revolution in history also came in the era of scientific and technological revolution.
A different sequence of technical revolutions was proposed by the American ethnographer Leslie Alvin White (1900-1975). In the scheme of historical development he created, the first stage is a tribal society based on gathering and hunting. The agricultural revolution had as its consequence the transformation of this society into a civilized one. The second technical revolution in White's scheme is the fuel (fuel) revolution: the steam engine was invented and humanity entered the age of steam.
The technical rise of the 11th-13th centuries (water and wind engines, etc.) back in the 1940s (article by E.M. Karus-Wilson "Industrial Revolution of the 13th century" (1941)) was called "the first industrial revolution", however, when creating the periodization of history, it was undeservedly neglected - perhaps because, being interrupted by the crisis of the XIV-XV centuries, it violated the harmony of the picture of progress.
The wide dissemination of the ideas of the agrarian and industrial revolutions and the inclusion of scientific and technological revolutions in them contributed to the formation of concepts at first industrial(Jean Fourastier (1907-1990) in The Great Hope of the 20th Century (1949)), and then post-industrial(Daniel Bell (b. 1919) in 1959 lectures) Society. A new periodization of history arose and established itself - according to the dominant sphere of the economy.
Both concepts claim that the problems of modern society are not in its social structure, but in the development of technology. Therefore, the technological revolution makes the social revolution unnecessary.
This confidence in the 1940s and 1950s in the West was so strong that it contributed to the technical interpretation of the past and future of mankind. So there were modernization concepts, designed to give a forecast of the future development of the newly independent states that appeared then.
Developed (industrial or even post-industrial) capitalist states, on the one hand, and the agrarian countries of the Third World, on the other, exist simultaneously, but are very different from each other. How do they compare?
"Concepts of modernization" argued: as two stages of development. The "traditional societies" of the third world must follow the Western path and become "modern societies".
Among the early concepts of modernization, the most famous and characteristic is the concept of the stages of economic growth by the American economist Walter Whitman Rostow (b. 1916), set forth in the book Stages of Economic Growth. Non-Communist Manifesto" (1960). It identified five stages of economic growth (they are also the stages of development of society).
The traditional society acted as the first stage: a society with limited production possibilities, with predominantly agricultural production, i.e. agrarian, a hierarchical social structure, power in the hands of landowners, a pre-Newtonian level of science and technology. The second stage is the period of creating the preconditions for the rise or the transitional state, the third is the rise stage, the fourth is the stage of rapid maturation, the fifth is the stage of high mass consumption.
According to Rostow, in principle, all individual societies must eventually pass through all these stages, of which, in general, only the first and last are important. The rest are transitional. This is the process of modernization.
When developing a stage-by-stage understanding of history, the question inevitably arises of the process of transition from one stage to another - the question of a qualitative leap, for which the name "revolution" is firmly fixed. Rostow often uses this term, but no more. He has no theory of revolution. He understands the revolution not as a transition from one stage to another, but as most Western sociologists understand it - a violent, illegal political coup.
This is not the resolution of social contradictions, but the overcoming of the resistance of conservatives who do not want modernization; by no means inevitable, but the worst case scenario, when the government does not control the gap between the real and the desired state of affairs. In short, revolution is a dangerous drug. Here you can see the moderately conservative, dating back to Hume and Tocqueville, Rostow's position.
The role of the quintessence of progress (the locomotive of history) in Rostow is performed by the concept of "modernization". In essence, it boils down to a technical revolution - industrialization processes that really went on and are going on at different times in different countries, starting with the most developed ones. The socio-economic structure of the industrializing societies is out of his field of vision. This is connected with Rostow's optimism, which is characteristic, however, of all modernization constructions.
“In general, an image was created of a leap or ascension of developing countries from their originality into a new world. What was meant was not a partial renewal, modernization, in a word, improvement, as follows from the Russian meaning of the word “modernization”, but fundamental transformations in the spirit of the English (or French) meaning of this word, the onset of the New Times (modern times), entry into Modernity ” . Accordingly, underdevelopment was considered a consequence of a simple lag of some countries from others. Modernization was supposed to put an end to backwardness and, consequently, to underdevelopment.
But, as it turned out in the next decade, she did not finish. The political independence achieved by most Third World countries in the 1950s and 1960s was not enough to get rid of economic dependence, and attempts to “catch up” with the developed capitalist countries through “modernization” were usually unsuccessful.
Supporters of the concepts of modernization did not immediately admit defeat, trying to make the theory more adequate to reality. The best known of the advanced modernization models is that of the Israeli sociologist Shmuel Noach Eisenstadt (b. 1923).
Its essence lies in the combination of the concepts of modernization and local civilizations. From the former, Modernity is taken as the goal of previous history; from the second - the diversity of the original types of "traditional societies", the pretentious classification of which (imperial, imperial-feudal, patrimonal, etc.) was given a lot of effort by the author, and the decisive role of culture, and not the economy, in their development. History is a process not only of modernization, but also of the convergence of "traditional societies". Outcome - Modernity.
Unlike Rostow, Eisenstadt sees different starting points for modernization and, as a result, different paths to modernity. Hence his interest in the problem of revolution, which gave rise to the book Revolution and the Transformation of Societies. Comparative Study of Civilizations (1978).
The social order, according to Eisenstadt, is based on "norms of social interaction" established through agreements between elites and representatives of various social groups. The institutionalization of the developed norms ensures the balance of the system, but at the same time creates "the possibility of tensions, conflicts and upheavals leading to change" .
In traditional societies, protest does not lead “beyond traditionality” because their “symbolic and structural foundations” (i.e., culture, which Eisenstadt, starting from the ideas of the Swiss neo-Freudian Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), considers partly innate, partly created by the division of labor) is stronger than analogous grounds for protest.
Only the European civilization could modernize relatively easily, becoming the "civilization of modern times." For others, this path is more difficult.
Here we come to the problem of revolution. Eisenstadt divides revolutions into "modern" (Dutch, English, American and French), which accompanied the modernization of the feudal West, and "late modern" XIX-XX centuries, which accompanied the modernization of traditional societies of other types. Each society is modernizing according to its own cultural identity, so the pace and results are different.
But the revolutions in this scheme are not the locomotives of history. "The very concept of revolution has connotations of upheaval, rapid abrupt change, discontinuity and violence". Given such a narrow understanding of revolution, it is natural to conclude that modernization without revolution is possible and desirable.
The causes of revolutions are again sought in psychology, and not in consciousness, but in the subconscious: the revolutions of the New Age for Eisenstadt are “this-world ecstasy” (religion is “other-worldly”), aimed at “merging real society and the image of a twin society. As a result, the revolutions of the New Age sought to absorb those symbols that were addressed to the spiritual qualities of human nature, and therefore inevitably went beyond the limits of any social order. The problem of the driving forces of the revolution appears in the form of the problem of the bearers of revolutionary symbols - "revolutionary groups". The objective world has been replaced by the human subconscious.
The scholastic constructions of Eisenstadt give nothing to historical science. Much more fruitful are the concepts that arose in opposition to the concepts of modernization. "dependent development".
“If the theorists of modernization emphasized the “assistance of the West”, then the radical left critics emphasized the “non-equivalent exchange”, the robbery of developing countries with the help of an unfair mechanism of foreign economic relations. What the former considered "beneficial" in the relations of the West with developing countries, the latter stigmatized as "pernicious"" .
The idea of "dependent development" was scientifically developed in the writings of the Argentine economist Raul Prebisch (1901-1986) in the 1950s. Prebisch's immediate predecessors were the authors of the concepts of imperialism, beginning with John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940), who published his book Imperialism. Research" in 1902. However, for the first time, the original Russian thinker N.F. Danielson (1844-1918), the translator of Capital, who was usually ranked among the liberal populists, but did not consider himself an opponent of Marxism, spoke for the first time about the exploitation of poor countries as a source of wealth for the West. Some authors see him as the first Russian Marxist. In his book Essays on Our Post-Reform Economy (1893), he argues that the entrepreneurs of "more cultured countries" exploit "less cultured nations" in the same way as their workers. The separation of capitalist and proletarian nations will later become the essence of the concepts of "dependent development" .
Subsequently, A. Emmanuel (Greece), T. Dos Santos, F. E. Cardoso, S. Furtado and R. M. Marini (Brazil), A. Aguilar (Mexico), E. Faletto (Chile), A. G. Frank (Netherlands), S. Amin (Senegal). A number of scientists from the USA and Western Europe - P. Baran and P. Sweezy (USA), G. Myrdal (Sweden), standing on similar positions, did not formally consider themselves to be supporters of this direction.
R. Prebisch introduced into scientific use the concepts of "center" and "periphery", related to each other. The center is a group of developed capitalist countries, the periphery is the underdeveloped countries of the "third world". According to R. Prebisch, capitalism is spreading in breadth not in order to promote the development of the periphery, but in order to use it. Exist two types of capitalism capitalism of the center and capitalism of the periphery. The latter is a product of the former, its necessary addition and is not capable of independent development. Peripheral capitalism is not stage on the way to Western capitalism, and a dead end addition to him.
“The specificity of the periphery is manifested in everything,” writes R. Prebisch, “in the field of technology and consumption, in the production structure, in the level of development and democratization, in the system of land ownership and the formation of surplus, in demographic growth.” Therefore, “the myth that we could develop in the image and likeness of the centers is crumbling ... Many years of observation of the course of events convinced me that the deep flaws inherent in Latin American capitalism cannot be overcome within the existing system. The system needs to be reformed."
R. Prebisch was far from Marxism and did not use Marxist categories in his analysis of dependent capitalism. But already Teontonio dos Santos came to the conclusion about the existence of a “dependent mode of production” as a variant of capitalism. For this, he and his followers were criticized by dogmatic Marxists in the leadership of the Communist Party of Uruguay. The introduction of the concept of "dependent mode of production" is an important step in the study of horizontal connections and the destruction of erroneous ideas about world history as the sum of parallel histories of individual societies.
“We see,” wrote T. Dos Santos, “that dependence is the most important feature of the socio-economic system of the underdeveloped countries… It acquires its own style – a dependent way – of participation in the development of the world capitalist economy. Thus dependence is a specific mode of capitalist production in our countries.
Originally based on Latin American material, the concept of "dependent development" was then extended to the entire "Third World" by the Swedish economist Gunnar Carl Myrdal (1898-1987) and the American Paul Baran (1910-1964).
I emphasize that “dependence” in this context is “exploitation”; dependent countries are exploited countries. “Basically,” G. Myrdal wrote, “differences between countries have similarities with differences between classes within a nation, if we mean classes as they existed before their rapid erosion began in connection with the process of national integration in our modern states prosperity. In this sense, most of the rest of humanity forms the lowest class of nations, and a number of nations are in the position of an intermediate layer of people. In fact, given the standard of living of the people in these countries, one might say that the term "proletariat" would be more appropriate in such a comparison on an international scale than ever before, or at any rate than now within any of the developed countries. The great awakening of the backward countries is gradually awakening among their peoples a class consciousness, without which the social grouping is amorphous and disunited.
Dependent development concepts explore horizontal links between societies various types V contemporary the world. Creating a picture of world history, taking into account horizontal connections, was not part of the task of their authors.
The exception to some extent is the German (now based in the Netherlands) sociologist André Gunder Frank (b. 1929), who raised the question of the history of addiction in his works The Development of Underdevelopment (1966) and The Sociology of Development and the Underdevelopment of Sociology (1967). capitalism in America - since the Spanish conquest. In the article "The Development of Underdevelopment", he writes that the current "developed" countries have never been "underdeveloped" ( under developed). They were Not developed ( un developed). The "underdevelopment" of the current "developing" (or rather, dependent) countries is the result of the "development" of the current "developed" countries. This is not a stage on the road to transforming "underdeveloped" countries into "developed" ones. The example of Japan in this case is inappropriate - Japan has never been a dependent country.
The concepts of "dependent development" were the forerunners world-systems approach, which has become a serious attempt to paint a picture of world history on the basis of horizontal connections. The world-systems approach arose in the form of the concept of world-economy Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) and the concept of world-systems Immanuel Wallerstein (b. 1930) and then acquired a large number of supporters and promoters. It is worth taking a closer look at the views of Braudel and Wallerstein and the perspectives that the concepts of dependent development and the world-systems approach that has grown out of them provide for solving the problem of revolution.
The essence of the world-system approach is the allocation of units larger than a separate society - "world-economy" by Braudel and "world-systems" divided into "world-empires" and "world-economy" by Wallerstein.
The basis for the selection of these formations, the world-systemists put not culture, but economics, which brought them closer to the materialistic understanding of history.
concept world-economy first introduced by Braudel. It was implicitly present already in the book “The Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II” (1949), and appeared in a clear form in his works “The Dynamics of Capitalism” (1976) and “Material Civilization, Economics and Capitalism. XV-XVIII centuries T. 3. Time of the world "(1979).
There are three signs that are true for any world-economy.
world-economy spatially limited. Its boundaries change rarely and slowly. The border between the world-economy is such a zone, which is unprofitable to cross from either side, therefore the world-economy in business was stable until the end of the 15th century, when "Europe moved its borders" and began to conquer the rest of the world.
Second sign. Each world-economy has its own center. Such a center is the dominant "capitalist" city. For historians of the Annales school, to which Braudel belonged, the word "capitalism" does not mean a socio-economic formation based on private ownership of the means of production and exploitation of labor by capital, as for Marx, but an activity related to money circulation, regardless of production. . Therefore, Braudel sees capitalism in any economy. Wallerstein, in line with the same views, will see the possibility of capitalism in the world-empires and the reality of capitalism in the world-economy of Europe.
The center of the world-economy can move. This may be the result of a political decision (Beijing becomes the capital of China in 1421 instead of Nanjing) or economic reasons(relocation of the center of Europe), but always has important consequences for the whole world-economy. The center is always a "supercity" served by other cities. There may be two centers (Rome and Alexandria, Venice and Genoa). This takes place during a brief period of struggle between them for leadership. The success of one of the centers leads to the decline of the other.
The fall of the old center of the world-economy and the rise of a new one is the largest possible social catastrophe, the consequences of which are felt throughout its entire space, especially visibly - on the outskirts.
“Having lost its power, Venice also lost its empire: Negropont in 1540, Cyprus ... in 1572, Candia in 1669. Amsterdam asserts its superiority - Portugal loses its Far Eastern empire... In 1815 London is established in its full strength, and by this time Spain has lost or should lose America. In the same way, after 1929, the world, which had been centered in London the day before, begins to concentrate around New York: after 1945, European colonial empires will all leave, one after another ... This repetition of colonial decay was not an accident; the chains of dependence were torn. Is it so difficult to imagine the consequences that the end of “American hegemony” would entail around the world?
Third sign. The space of the world-economy is divided into several interdependent zones. The most important feature of the world-economy is the hierarchy of these zones. “Every world-economy is a folding, a combination of zones connected together, however at different levels. Outlined in space at least three areas, three categories: a narrow center, secondary, rather developed areas, and, finally, the huge outer outskirts ... The center, so to speak, the “heart”, connects all the most advanced and most diverse that exists. The next link has only a part of these advantages, although it enjoys some of their share: this is the “brilliant second” zone. The vast periphery, with its sparse population, is, on the contrary, archaic, lagging behind, and easy to be exploited by others.
Any sphere of people's life depends on the world-economy.
It would seem that in this picture of history there is a place for social revolutions. But Braudel carefully avoids this notion. Neither the shift of the center nor the change in the boundaries of the world-economy is called by him a social revolution. Revolution, he writes, "is a complex and ambiguous word." Better to do without it.
But it doesn't work out at all. There is an undoubted revolution - industrial. Braudel's interpretation of it differs sharply from the apology for modernization.
"England succeeded in her revolution, being at the center of the world, being herself the center of the world. Third world countries want their success, but they are on the periphery. And then everything works against them ... including the capital that they borrow abroad; including maritime transport, which they do not control; including their own raw materials, which are in abundance and sometimes at the mercy of the buyer ... That is why industrialization is progressing where it has already made progress, and the gap between the underdeveloped countries and the rest is only increasing ...
The “Third World” can only progress by breaking the modern world order in one way or another.”
This is Braudel's conclusion. But it simply and unambiguously signifies the need for a social revolution. So the concept that the historian wanted to banish from science returned there anonymously. It is impossible to study society by ignoring revolutions.
If for Braudel the formulation of the principles of the world-economic approach was the result scientific research, then for Wallerstein it is the starting point. He sees in the world-system approach the only acceptable methodology for the cognition of social phenomena.
The only social reality "not divisible into politics, economics and culture", Wallerstein considers "social systems", which are subdivided into mini-systems and world-systems. In turn, system worlds are divided into empire worlds and economy worlds. The three main types of social systems are based on three different modes of production: reciprocal lineage, tributary and capitalist, respectively. Unfortunately, Wallerstein missed such an important achievement of the concepts of dependent development as the concept of dependent capitalism, which greatly impoverished his concept.
"The world-system is a social system that has boundaries, structure, rules of legitimation and coherence". The criterion of the world-system is the self-contained existence of its existence, the “World-system” is not “ world system", and the "system", which is the "world", as in Braudel. Self-sufficiency is a theoretical absolute (like a vacuum) that does not exist in reality, but makes the phenomena of reality measurable.
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3. The concept of evolutionary and revolutionary development of society
Sociologists of all schools and trends view society as a changing system. However, when interpreting social changes, representatives of various schools and trends show significant differences. The absolutization of this or that type of change in social systems gave rise to two methodologically different currents in sociology: social evolutionism and revolutionism.
Social evolutionism is an attempt at a global understanding of the historical process as part of a general, infinitely diverse and active process of evolution of the Cosmos, the planetary system, the Earth, and culture. Social evolutionism is most clearly represented in the system of the English sociologist G. Spencer. He developed the most complete scheme of the evolutionary process, which includes several fundamental points. The core of this scheme is differentiation, which is inevitable, since any finite homogeneous systems are unstable due to different conditions for their individual parts and the unequal impact of various external forces on their various elements. As complexity and heterogeneity increase in systems, the rate of differentiation accelerates, since each differentiated part is not only the result of differentiation, but its further source. Differentiation, according to Spencer, involves specialization, division of functions between parts and selection of the most stable structural relationships. Evolutionary changes occur in the direction of increasing harmonization, structural and functional compliance of all components of the whole. Therefore, differentiation is always accompanied by integration. The natural limit of all evolutionary processes in this case is the state of dynamic equilibrium, which has the inertia of self-preservation and the ability to adapt to new conditions. The evolution of any system consists in increasing and complicating its organization. However, the accumulation of inconsistencies and disharmony in the course of evolution can lead to the disintegration of its own works.
Social evolution, according to Spencer, is part of universal evolution. It consists in the complication of forms of social life, their differentiation and integration at a new level of organization. In the sociology of H. Spencer, the main idea of social evolutionism of the 19th century was realized. - the idea of the existence of historical stages of human society, developing from simple to differentiated, from traditional to rational, from unenlightened to enlightened, from a society with manual technology to a society with machine technology, using artificially created power, from a fuzzy integrated society to a strictly integrated one.
A significant contribution to the development of the ideas of social evolutionism was made by the French sociologist E. Durkheim. It was E. Durkheim who first substantiated the proposition that the division of labor is the cause and effect of the growing complexity of society.
E. Durkheim contrasted two types of society at one pole of social evolution there are simple societies with a developed division of labor and a segmental structure, consisting of segments that are homogeneous and similar to each other, at the other, highly complex societies, which are a system of various organs, each of which has its own special role and which themselves consist of differentiated parts.
The transition from one society to another occurs along a long evolutionary path, the main points of which are as follows: 1) the population grows in a segmental society; 2) it increases the "moral density", multiplies the social relations in which each person is included, and, consequently, competition intensifies; 3) this creates a threat to the cohesion of society; 4) the division of labor is designed to eliminate this threat, since it is accompanied by differentiation (functional, group, rank, etc.) and requires the interdependence of specialized individuals and groups.
Within the framework of social evolutionism, a number of theories have arisen that have set themselves the goal of reflecting the progressive development of society based on a comparison of its past and present state. The first attempt to create such a theory was made by the German sociologist F. Tennis (1855-1936) in his famous book "Community and Society". F. Tennis uses the German terms "gemeinschaft" and "gesellschaft" to distinguish between traditional and modern society based on five main types of social interconnection. The Gemeinschaft concept is applied to a peasant village community, and the Gesellschaft concept is applied to an industrial urban society. The main differences between them are as follows: 1) Geminschaft assumes that people live in accordance with the communal principle and worldly values, while a Gesellschaft-type society is based on the pursuit of personal gain; 2) Gemeinschaft gives primary importance to customs, while Gesellschaft is based on formal laws; 3) Gemingschaft suggests limited and undeveloped specialization, while specialized professional roles appear in Gesellschaft; 4) Gemeinschaft relies on religious, Gesellschaft - on secular values; 5) Gemeinschaft is based on family and community, Gesellschaft is based on large corporate and associative forms of association of people.
In line with social evolutionism, based on the opposition of traditional and modern society, the theory of growth stages was formed. The theory of "stages of growth" by W. Rostow describes the progressive development of society as a transition from an agrarian "traditional" society to a modern "industrial", as the passage of 5 most important steps - stages.
The first stage is a traditional society based on primitive agricultural production. Savings here are insignificant and spent unproductively.
The second stage - "transitional society" - at this stage, the preconditions for a "shift" are created: the growth of agricultural labor productivity, an increase in capital investment per capita, the emergence of a centralized state, etc.
The third stage is the period of the "industrial revolution", characterized by the mobilization of domestic savings and the investment of more than 10% of the national product in production, the rapid growth of the main industries and a radical change in production methods.
The fourth stage is the "path to maturity" - the formation of an industrial society. This process is distinguished by the rapid development of industry, the emergence of new branches of production, an increase in the level of capital investment to 20%, and the rapid growth of cities.
Industrial society is characterized by: 1) a developed and complex system of division of labor in society as a whole, with its strong specialization in specific areas of production and management; 2) mass production of goods for a wide market; 3) mechanization and automation of production and management. 4) scientific and technological revolution. The consequence of ethyl processes is the high development of means of transport and communications, a high degree of mobility and urbanization, qualitative changes in the structures of national consumption. From the point of view of this theory, the main characteristics of large-scale industry - industry determine the form of behavior not only in the sphere of organization and management of production, but in all other spheres of public life.
Popular in the 60s of the XX century. the theory of industrial society in the 70s was developed in the theory of "post-industrial society". Its most prominent representatives are American sociologists and gender: canopies D. Bell, 3. Brzezinski. A. Toffler and French sociologists and political scientists A. Touraine and J. Fourastier. According to this theory, society in its progressive development goes through three main stages:]) pre-industrial (agrarian), 2) industrial and 3) post-industrial. Brzezinski calls the third stage technotronic, and A. Toffler - super-industrial. At the first stage, the primary sphere of economic activity - agriculture prevails, at the second - the secondary sphere - industry, at the third stage - the tertiary - the service sector. The main task of this stage is the individualization of production and consumption. In a pre-industrial society, the main goal is power. In the industrial - money, in the post-industrial - knowledge, the possession of which is the main, prestigious factor. Each of these three stages is characterized by specific forms of social organization: in an agrarian society it is the church and the army, in an industrial society it is a corporation, in a post-industrial society it is universities. The social structure is also in accordance with this: priests and feudal lords play a dominant role in an agrarian society, businessmen in an industrial society, and scientists and consultant managers in a post-industrial society.
The theories of industrial and post-industrial society are within the framework of social evolutionism, since they involve the passage of certain stages by society based on technical and technological innovations in combination with various psychological motives for activity: nationalism, entrepreneurial spirit, competition, Protestant ethics, personal ambitions of entrepreneurs and politicians, etc. e. Technological upheavals entail upheavals in other spheres of social life, but they are not accompanied by social conflicts, social revolutions.
The concept of social evolutionism occupies a dominant position in sociology in the interpretation of social change. However, along with it, the theory of the revolutionary transformation of society, the founder of which was K. Marx and F. Engels, was quite widespread. The Marxist concept of social development is based on a formational approach to the interpretation of history. According to this approach, humanity in its development goes through five main stages: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist. The transition from one socio-political formation to another is carried out on the basis of a social revolution. A social revolution is a radical qualitative change in the entire system of social life. The economic basis of the social revolution is the deepening conflict between the growth of the productive forces of society and the outdated, conservative system of production relations, which manifests itself in the intensification of social antagonisms and the intensification of the class struggle between the ruling class, interested in maintaining the existing system, and the oppressed classes. The first act of social revolution is the conquest of political power. On the basis of the instruments of power, the victorious class carries out transformations in all other spheres of public life and thus creates the prerequisites for the formation of a new system of socio-economic and spiritual relations. From the point of view of Marxism, the great and strategic role of revolutions is that they remove obstacles from the path of social development and serve as a powerful stimulus for all social development. K. Marx called revolutions "the locomotives of history."
Evolutionist and revolutionary theories of society are based on the idea of social progress. They affirm the possibility of a directed development of society, characterized by a transition from the lower to the higher, from the less perfect to the more perfect. In one case, the criterion of progress is the complication of the social organization of society (G. Spencer), in the other - changes in the system of social relations and the type of regulation of social relations (E. Tennis), in the third - changes in the nature of production and consumption (W. Rostow and D Bell), in the fourth - the degree of mastery of society by the spontaneous forces of nature, expressed in the growth of labor productivity, and the degree of liberation of people from the yoke of the spontaneous forces of social development (K. Marx).
THEORETICAL CONCEPTS OF THE REVOLUTION 1. The right to resist tyrants in a traditional society 2. Evaluations of the revolution in the ideology of the Enlightenment 3. Attitude towards revolutions in the ideological heritage of the 19th century: - Conservative ideology about the French Revolution - The role of revolutions in the assessments of the ideology of classical liberalism - Theoretical concept of revolution by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - Anarchist doctrine of social revolution - Ideas about revolutions in the early twentieth century 4. Sociology of the revolution of the twentieth century 5. The concept of revolution in modern political science
F. Hautemann F. Duplessis-Mornet THE RIGHT TO RESIST TO TYRANTS in French political thought of the 17th century FRANCOIS HAUTHMANN Pamphlets "Tiger", "Anti-Tribonian": calls for resistance to usurpers of power, the thesis about the historicity of laws and their compliance with the customs of the country, France has their experience of freedom - Merovingian laws and ancient Germanic customs. In the political program of "Franco-Gaul": proclaimed the principle of the supreme sovereignty of the people, which existed during the time of the Merovingians and Carolingians, when the people chose their monarch. Demands: a return to the ancient constitution of Gaul, to a federation of self-governing republics, to the full rights of the States General, to the right of the people to elect and depose a king, to declare wars, to legislate. For the sake of this, a war against the king for the public good of the country is legitimate, and the nobility should lead it. PHILIPPE DUPLESSI-MORNET Pamphlet "A claim to tyrants" - The people existed before the kings, he elected them, putting the contract and mutual obligations as the basis of their power. Violation of the rights of the people leads to the establishment of tyranny. By the people is meant the nobility and the top of the third estate; they must cleanse the country from the sacrilege of tyranny.
THE THEORY OF THE PUBLIC CONTRACT AND THE RIGHT TO RESIST TYRANCE “On the right of war and peace. ”G. Grotius The state is “a perfect union of free people, concluded for the sake of observing the law and the common good.” The people can change the form of government if the agreement is terminated by the rulers of the state. Citizens have the right to consider the social contract terminated in the event of "extreme necessity", "great and obvious danger" that threatens citizens from the rulers of the state. "Political treatise" the goal of the state in reality is freedom B. Spinoza When the state does something contrary to the dictates of reason, it "sins" against its nature, betrays itself, and in this sense commits a crime. For such a situation of violation of the terms of the treaty by the state authorities, Spinoza recognizes the natural right of the people to revolt.
HUMAN RIGHTS AS A JUSTIFICATION OF THE REVOLUTION 24 pamphlets on human rights problems the state was created at the behest of God by the social agreement of the people, who, by virtue of the innate freedom of people, have the right to govern themselves and create the form of government that they please. If kings say that their power is from God, then the freedom of the people, whose power is primary, is also from God, based on innate rights. D. Milton "People's agreement" D. Lilburn The state was created by mutual agreement of people "for the good and good of everyone." From this follows the inalienable right of the people to organize the state in such a way that this good is ensured. Power must be based on the free choice or consent of the people; no one can dominate people without their free consent. "Two Treatises on Government" Reflections on the Glorious Revolution of 1688. D. Locke The state was created to guarantee natural rights (freedom, equality, property) and laws (peace and security), it should not encroach on these rights, it should be organized so that natural rights are reliably guaranteed. the uprising of the people against the tyrannical power that encroaches on the natural rights and freedom of the people is lawful and necessary
POLITICAL RADICALISM J.-J. RUSSO (1712 -1778) "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" "On the Social Contract, or Principles of Political Law" "Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality between People" q q THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION WAS ASSOCIATED WITH THE APPEARANCE AND GROWTH OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY, OR WITH THE REGRESS OF FREEDOM . The first time there is wealth inequality. It was an inevitable consequence of the establishment of private ownership of land. From that time on, the state of nature was replaced by civil society. At the next stage, political inequality appears in public life. The state was formed. At this stage, property inequality is supplemented by a new one - the division of society into ruling and subject. The last limit of inequality comes with the degeneration of the state into despotism. In such a state there are no more rulers, no laws - there are only tyrants. Revolt against tyranny is a lawful act
T. Payne E.-J. Sieyès F. Guizot I. Taine APOLOGY REVOLUTION OF T I Y There are grievances that nature cannot forgive: it would cease to be itself if it did so. The Almighty instilled in us an indestructible attraction to goodness and wisdom. If we were deaf to the voice of good feelings, social ties would fall apart, justice on earth would be uprooted ... O you who love humanity! You who dare to resist not only tyranny but tyrant, come forward! T. Payne
The traditionalist concept of Edmund Burke REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE Contested: Ø the theory of the social contract Ø the theory of popular rule. ØAn artificial fiction is the will of the majority ØThe theory of human rights is based on fictions. Ø The supposed equality of people is also a fiction. popular sovereignty is "the most false, immoral, malicious doctrine that has ever been preached to the people" q Abstract ideas of freedom lead to anarchy, and through it to tyranny. q Any social order arises as a result of a long historical work that affirms stability, traditions, customs q All this is the most valuable legacy of the ancestors, which must be carefully preserved. q the state, society, law are not invented by man, but are created as a result of a long evolution, they cannot be rebuilt at the will of people.
CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION REFLECTIONS ON FRANCE JOSEPH DE MESTRE q A man who can change everything, but cannot create or change anything for the better without God's help, imagined himself as a source of supreme power and wanted to do everything himself. q For this, God punished people, saying - do it! q And the revolution, God's punishment, destroyed the entire political order, perverted the moral laws. q History shows that revolutions always produce more evil than the one they want to correct.
EVALUATION OF THE REVOLUTION IN I. KANT'S METAPHYSICS OF MORALS METHODS OF IMPLEMENTING CHANGES REFORM AND REVOLUTION "CHANGES IN THE FAULTY STATE ORGANIZATION, WHICH ARE SOMETIMES REQUIRED, CAN BE MADE ONLY BY THE SOVEREIGN, NOT THE REFORM BY THE SOVEREIGN WAY." “The revolution of a talented people, taking place before our eyes, may end in success or failure, may be so full of disasters and atrocities that a sane person, even in the hope of a happy outcome, would not dare to start such an expensive experiment a second time - and yet this revolution , meets in the hearts of all viewers. . . sympathy "" A citizen of the state, and, moreover, with the permission of the sovereign himself, should have the right to openly express his opinion about which of the orders of the sovereign seem to him unfair in relation to society ... ". Public opinion has the right to refuse to support a tyrant; placed in conditions of moral isolation and fearing a spontaneous rebellion, he will be forced to heed the voice of the people, comply with existing laws or reform them if they need to be corrected
The role of revolutions in assessing the ideology of classical liberalism. Alexis de Tocqueville THE OLD ORDER AND THE REVOLUTION 1856 The revolution was not to change the character of our civilization, stop its progressive development, change the essence of the fundamental laws underlying human societies in our West. If we consider the Revolution itself, clearing it of the accidental stratifications that have modified its image in different periods and in different countries, we will see that its only result was the destruction of the political institutions that for many centuries reigned supreme over the majority of European peoples and are usually called feudal, and replacing them with a more uniform and simple political system, the basis of which is the equality of conditions. The revolution was least of all an accidental event. And although it took the world by surprise, it was nevertheless the end of a long work, the swift and stormy end of a work over which ten generations had labored.
Theoretical Conception of Revolution by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels German Ideology (1846) Manifesto communist party(1848) GERMAN IDEOLOGY: ü dialectics of interaction and development of productive forces and production relations ü the doctrine of social formations, ü the doctrine of the state ü the theory of classes and class struggle ü the proletarian revolution is assessed as the result of the development of contradictions between the productive forces and production relations ü the necessity of conquest of political power by the proletariat is formulated, ü in The idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat is expressed in a general form. . . revolution is necessary not only because it is impossible to overthrow the ruling class in any other way, but also because the overthrowing class can throw off all the old abomination and become capable of creating a new basis for society only in a revolution.
IN THE PLACE OF THE OLD BOURGEOIS SOCIETY WITH ITS CLASSES AND CLASS OPPOSITIONS COMES AN ASSOCIATION IN WHICH THE FREE DEVELOPMENT OF EVERYONE IS A CONDITION FOR THE FREE DEVELOPMENT OF ALL THE COMMUNIST PARTY MANIFESTO: The justification for the inevitability of the communist revolution. “The history of all hitherto existing societies has been the history of the struggle of classes” üModern society is increasingly splitting into two opposite, antagonistic classes - the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. ü The development of productive forces that took place under the rule and under the leadership of the bourgeoisie, and now has outgrown bourgeois relations and requires their elimination, ü The process of the formation and development of the proletariat, that objective force that will be forced to abolish bourgeois production relations that have become fetters for the further development of modern productive forces. Two general tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat are formulated: to turn private ownership of the means of production into public ownership and to develop production as quickly as possible. üTotal characteristics of a communist society: class differences will disappear, public power will lose its political character, free development of everyone will be ensured.
THEORETICAL CONCEPT OF REVOLUTION IN THE HERITAGE OF CLASSICAL ANARCHISM STATE POWER HIERARCHY CENTRALIZATION BUREAUCRACY RIGHT FEDERALISM DECENTRALIZATION MUTUALITY FREE CONTRACT AND SELF-GOVERNMENT POLITICAL REVOLUTION SOCIAL REVOLUTION
What is property? Or a study on the principle of law and power 1840 Anarchy was understood as the abolition of all forms of human oppression, the replacement of a "political constitution" beneficial only to the ruling minority, a "social constitution" corresponding to justice and human nature P.-J. Proudhon Statehood and anarchy 1873 M. Bakunin "At present, for all the countries of the civilized world, there is only one world question, one world interest - the complete and final liberation of the proletariat from economic exploitation and state oppression. "Freedom without socialism is a privilege, injustice. . . Socialism without freedom is slavery and bestiality. The state and its role in history 1896 P. Kropotkin The goal of the revolution is the establishment of "stateless communism", a social system in the form of a free federal union and self-governing units (communities, territories, cities), based on the principle of voluntariness and “headlessness.” Collective conduct of production, collective distribution of resources, collectiveness of everything related to the economy, the service sector, and human relationships were assumed.
THE FIRST PROGRAM OF THE RSDLP IS ADOPTED BY THE 2nd CONGRESS OF 1903 The maximum program: determined the main task of the party - the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to build a socialist society The minimum program: set the immediate task of overthrowing the tsarist autocracy and replacing it with a democratic republic
MAXIMUM PROGRAM Ø Replacing private ownership of the means of production and circulation with public property, Ø introducing a systematic organization of the social production process. To ensure the well-being and all-round development of all members of society, the social revolution of the proletariat will abolish the division of society into classes and thereby liberate all oppressed humanity, as it will put an end to all forms of exploitation of one part of society by another. The necessary condition for this social revolution is the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the conquest by the proletariat of such political power as will enable it to crush all resistance from the exploiters.
On the Slogan of the United States of Europe, 1915 Uneven economic and political development is an unconditional law of capitalism. From this it follows that the victory of socialism is possible initially in a few or even in one single capitalist country. The political form of society in which the proletariat wins by overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic that increasingly centralizes the forces of the proletariat of a given nation or given nations in the struggle against states that have not yet converted to socialism. The destruction of classes is impossible without the dictatorship of the oppressed class, the proletariat. The free unification of nations in socialism is impossible without a more or less long, stubborn struggle between the socialist republics and the backward states.
"APRIL THESES" Originality current moment in Russia consists in the transition from the first stage of the revolution, which gave power to the bourgeoisie, to its second stage, which is to place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest strata of the peasantry. Not a parliamentary republic, but a republic of Soviets of Workers', Laborers' and Peasants' Deputies throughout the country, from top to bottom. Elimination of police, army, bureaucracy. The salary of all officials, with the election and turnover of all of them at any time, is not higher than the average salary of a good worker.
"APRIL THESES" Confiscation of all landed estates. Nationalization of all lands in the country, Disposal of land by local Soviets of Laborers and Peasants' Deputies. The immediate merger of all the banks of the country into one nationwide bank Not the "introduction" of socialism, but the transition to social production and distribution of products.
"STATE AND REVOLUTION" MARXISM'S TEACHING ABOUT THE STATE AND THE TASKS OF THE PROLETARIAT IN THE REVOLUTION The state is a product and manifestation of the irreconcilability of class contradictions. The state arises where, when and to the extent that class contradictions objectively cannot be reconciled. The state is an organ of class domination, an organ of the oppression of one class by another; The emancipation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which has been created by the ruling class.
"STATE AND REVOLUTION" The bourgeois state ... is destroyed by the proletariat in the revolution. The “special force for the suppression” of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie must be replaced by a “special force for the suppression” of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat (dictatorship of the proletariat). dictatorship of the proletariat The doctrine of the class struggle necessarily leads to the recognition of the political domination of the proletariat, its dictatorship, that is, a power not shared with anyone and based directly on the armed force of the masses.
"STATE AND REVOLUTION" The period of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie is inevitably a period of unprecedented fierce class struggle, unprecedented acute forms its Revolution is undoubtedly the most authoritarian thing possible. A revolution is an act in which part of the population imposes its will on another part by means of guns, bayonets, cannons, i.e., extremely authoritarian means. And the victorious party is necessarily compelled to maintain its dominance by means of the fear which its weapons inspire in the reactionaries.
"STATE AND REVOLUTION" We set as our ultimate goal the destruction of the state, that is, of all organized and systematic violence, of all violence against people in general. Ø We do not expect the advent of such a social order, when the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority is not respected. Ø But, striving for socialism, we are convinced that it will develop into communism, and in connection with this, any need for violence against people in general, for subjugating one person to another, one part of the population to another part of it, will disappear, because people will get used to observing elementary conditions of society without violence and without subjugation.
Wilfredo Pareto Treatise on General Sociology 1916 üHistory is an arena of constant struggle different types elites for power. ü Elite circulation is necessary to maintain social balance ü If the elite turns out to be closed, that is, circulation does not occur or occurs too slowly, this leads to the degradation of the elite and its decline. üAt the same time, in the lower stratum, the number of individuals with the necessary traits for governing and capable of using violence to seize power is growing üThe revolution acts as a kind of complement to the circulation of elites. In a certain sense, the essence of the revolution consists in a sharp and violent change in the composition of the ruling elite. At the same time, as a rule, during the revolution, individuals from the lower strata are controlled by individuals from the higher strata, since the latter possess the intellectual qualities necessary for battle and are deprived of those qualities that individuals from the lower strata possess.
Pitirim Sorokin Sociology of the revolution 1925 1) 2) Causes of the revolution: growing suppression of basic instincts; their universal character; If the digestive reflex of a good part of the population is "suppressed" by hunger, If the instinct of self-preservation is "suppressed" If the reflex of collective self-preservation is "suppressed", their shrines are desecrated, their members are tormented If the need for housing, clothing, etc. is not satisfied at least in a minimal amount If the majority of the population is "suppressed" the sexual reflex in all its manifestations If the possessive instinct of the masses is "suppressed", poverty and deprivation prevail If people are faced, on the one hand, with insults, neglect, permanent and unfair disregard for their merits and achievements, and on the other hand, with an exaggeration of the merits of people who do not deserve it. If most people suppress their impulse to struggle and competition, creative work, the acquisition of various experiences, the need for freedom, then we have auxiliary conditions - the components of a revolutionary explosion.
Pitirim Sorokin Sociology of the Revolution 1925 Causes of the revolution: 3) If the government and the groups that stand guard over order are not able to prevent disintegration, for a revolutionary explosion it is also necessary that social groups, acting on guard of the existing order, would not have a sufficient arsenal of means to suppress the destructive encroachments from below. When the forces of order are no longer able to carry out the practice of suppression, the revolution becomes a matter of time. By insufficiency and ineffectiveness, I mean the inability of the authorities and the ruling elite: a) to develop countermeasures against the pressure of repressed instincts, sufficient to achieve a state of social equilibrium; b) remove or at least weaken the conditions that produce "repression"; c) split and divide the repressed mass into groups, setting them against each other, in order to weaken them mutually; d) direct the "exit" of suppressed impulses into a different, non-revolutionary channel.
Pitirim Sorokin Sociology of the Revolution 1925 The atmosphere of pre-revolutionary epochs always strikes the observer with the powerlessness of the authorities and the degeneration of the ruling privileged classes. They are sometimes unable to perform the elementary functions of power, not to mention the forceful resistance to the revolution. Nor are they capable of dividing and weakening the opposition, curtailing repressions, or organizing the "exit" of repressed impulses into a non-revolutionary channel. Almost all pre-revolutionary governments carry the characteristic features of anemia, impotence, indecision, incompetence, confusion, frivolous indiscretion, and on the other hand - licentiousness, corruption, immoral sophistication ...
Pitirim Sorokin Sociology of the Revolution 1925 Two stages of the revolutionary process: the first stage of any deep revolution does not eliminate the very fact of suppression, but, on the contrary, only strengthens it. The behavior of the masses, now controlled only by elementary unconditioned reflexes, becomes uncontrollable. Hunger, instead of decreasing, increases. Human security becomes even more problematic; Mortality increases catastrophically; As a result, the self-preservation reflex is even more suppressed. Expropriations, starting with the rich, spread to the entire population, which further suppress the possessive instinct. Sexual permissiveness suppresses the sexual instinct. The despotism of the new ruling class suppresses the instinct of freedom. People are becoming less adaptive to the environment and mutual relations. Their cumulative assessment of everything that is happening can be expressed in the words: "It is impossible to live like this any longer, we need order, order at any cost."
Pitirim Sorokin Sociology of the Revolution 1925 Two stages of the revolutionary process: And now the demand for unlimited freedom is replaced by a thirst for order; the praise of the "liberators" from the old regime is replaced by the praise of the "liberators" from the revolution, in other words, the organizers of order. "Order!" and "Long live the creators of order!" - such is the general impulse of the second stage of the revolution. Fatigue acts from within, giving rise to individual apathy, indifference, mass lethargy. All people are in this state, and there is nothing easier than subordinating them to some energetic group of people. And what was practically impossible at the first stage of the revolution is now carried out with ease. The population, which is an inert mass, is a convenient material for social "shaping" by a new "repressor". Thus, it is the revolution that inevitably creates all the conditions for the emergence of despots, tyrants and coercion of the masses.
The First Wave in the Development of the Sociology of Revolution L. Edwards "The Natural History of the Revolution" (1927). E. Lederer "On Revolutions" (1936) C. Brinton "Anatomy of a Revolution" (1938) D. Pitti "The Revolutionary Process" (1938) The Second Wave in the Development of the Sociology of Revolution J. Davis "Toward a Theory of Revolution" (1962), T. R. Garr "Why People Revolt" (1970), C. Johnson "Revolutionary Change" (1966), N. Smelser "The Theory of Collective Behavior" (1963) The Third Wave in the Development of the Sociology of Revolution With Huntington "Political Order in Transforming Societies" ( 1968) and “Revolutions and Collective Violence” (1975) G. Eckstein “The Etiology of Internal War” (1965), E. Oberschal “Growing Expectations and Political Disorder” (1969) E. Muller “The Applicability of Possibility Theory to the Analysis of Political Violence” ( 1972), B. Salert "Revolutions and revolutionaries" (1976), T. Skokpol "Explaining revolutions: in search of a social-structuralist approach" (1976), "States and social revolutions" (1979)
The definition of revolution in the writings of representatives of the third generation: “a rapid, fundamental and violent change in the dominant values and myths of this society, its political institutions, produced by the internal forces of society, social structure, leadership, government activities and politics "S. Huntington" a rapid, radical transformation of the state and class structures of society ... accompanied and partly carried out through uprisings of the masses with a class basis "T. Skokpol Signs of revolutions: 1) radical, comprehensive changes in the social order 2) Large masses of mobilized people are involved 3) The revolutionary process is always accompanied by violence
S. Eisenstadt Revolution and the transformation of societies 1978 Ø The most common image of the revolution. . . has several main Ø Ø Ø components: violence, novelty and the generality of change. Revolution is characterized as the most intense, violent and conscious process of all social movements. They see it as the ultimate expression of free will and deep feelings, a manifestation of extraordinary organizational abilities and a highly developed ideology of social protest. Emphasis is placed on a utopian or emancipatory ideal based on the symbolism of equality, progress, freedom, and on the belief that revolutions create a new and better social order. social factors like the class struggle, the involvement of large social groups in the social movement and their political organization.
The results of the revolution appear to be multilateral. Ø Firstly, this is a violent change in the existing political regime. . . Ø Secondly, the replacement of an incapable ruling elite or ruling class by others. Ø Thirdly, far-reaching changes in all institutional areas, primarily in the economy and class relations - changes that are aimed at modernizing most aspects of social life, at economic development and industrialization, centralization and expansion of the circle participating in the political process. Ø Fourth, a radical break with the past. . . Ø Fifthly, they believe that revolutions carry out not only institutional and organizational changes, but also make changes in morality and education, that they create or give birth to a new person.
"modern definition of revolution: it is an attempt to reshape political institutions and give a new justification for political power in society, accompanied by formal or informal mobilization of the masses and such non-institutionalized actions that undermine existing power" Jack Goldstone "Toward a fourth generation theory of revolution" 2001 Typologies of revolutions: Ø Revolutions , which, along with political institutions, transform economic and. social structures are called great; Those that change only political institutions are called political revolutions. ØRevolutions associated with the independent action of the lower classes are called social revolutions, Øwhile large-scale reforms carried out by elites who directly control the mobilization of the masses are sometimes called elitist revolutions or revolutions from above. Another typology is based on the guiding ideology of revolutionary movements, distinguishing between: liberal or constitutional revolutions, Ø communist revolutions, Ø Islamic revolutions
Velvet revolutions of 1989 Ø Ø Ø In 1989, revolutions took place in many countries of Eastern Europe, which led to the liquidation of the "socialist camp" . June 4th. Parliamentary elections in Poland, which allowed the opposition parties on 24 August. The government of Poland was headed by the representative of the opposition Tadeusz Mazowiecki. September 18th. During the negotiations within the framework of the "round table" between the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party and the opposition, a decision was made to introduce a multi-party system in Hungary. Ø 18 October. The Hungarian Parliament adopted about 100 constitutional amendments regulating the transition to parliamentary democracy. Ø 23 October. The Hungarian Republic was proclaimed in Budapest and defined itself as a free, democratic, independent state governed by the rule of law. Ø 9 November. The Council of Ministers of the GDR decided to open the border with the FRG and West Berlin. Ø 10 November. The head of the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Communist Party, Todor Zhivkov, resigned from the post of general secretary and member of the Politburo. Ø 17 November. The Parliament of Bulgaria elected Mladenov the head of the State Council of the country. Ø 28 November. In Czechoslovakia, a decision was made to create a new government and to abolish the provision enshrined in the constitution on the leading role of the Communist Party. Ø 29 December Václav Havel is elected President of Czechoslovakia. Ø 22 December. In Romania, the head of state and the Romanian Communist Party, N. Ceausescu, was overthrown. I. Iliescu, the leader of the National Salvation Front, became President of Romania Ø October 3, 1990 - German unification
CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF THE "VELVET REVOLUTIONS" OF 1989-1990 q "The internal source of the modern revolution is the counter-elite: an active, power-hungry stratum of those who were left behind as a result of the clan struggle" . q “Velvet” revolutions in all Eastern European countries took place almost simultaneously, despite the different levels of development of countries, different levels of social contradictions and, most importantly, different strengths of their leaders. q They were carried out according to a similar scenario in the year when, in the course of active negotiations between Gorbachev and the United States, the fate of the USSR was decided in principle. q The most important civilizational condition for the “velvet” revolutions common to the countries of Eastern Europe was the fact that the inhabitants of these countries were drawn to the West. One of the manifestations associated with the change in the system of power in the region should be considered the belief of Eastern Europeans in their identity with Western Europe. q A feature of "velvet" revolutions is the fact that supporters of different socio-philosophical principles merge in them. They were united by a common dislike for state power and the political regime, "keeping" them in the anti-Western "Soviet bloc". q A key factor in mass support for revolutionary change was the potential for material gain. q Destroying the "authoritarian bureaucratic system", the population of Eastern European countries hoped for a sharp increase in opportunities for social mobility
"COLOR REVOLUTIONS" 2003 - Rose Revolution in Georgia. 2004 - Orange Revolution in Ukraine. 2005 - Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan. 2005 - Cedar Revolution in Lebanon. 2006 - An attempt at the Vasilkovo revolution in Belarus. 2008 - Attempted color revolution in Armenia 2009 - Color revolution in Moldova 2010 - Melon revolution - the second Kyrgyz revolution 2010 -2011 - Jasmine revolution (or Date) in Tunisia 2011 - Melon revolution (or Twitter, Date) in Egypt
CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF “COLOR” REVOLUTIONS q The form of revolution is mass rallies, demonstrations and strikes, which are held by the opposition after elections are held, according to the results of which the opposition is declared the loser. q The opposition in this case claims that there were violations of the electoral legislation that distorted the will of the people. q Mass protests lead either to a second vote (Ukraine) or to the forcible seizure of government buildings by a crowd (Yugoslavia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan) and the flight of state leaders, followed by new elections. In both cases, the opposition comes to power. q The revolution is taking place under anti-corruption and radical democratic slogans. q The revolution is preceded by the formation of youth organizations that form the “field detachments of the revolution”. q The revolution is emphatically bloodless. Hence the characteristic brand of the revolution - a non-aggressive color or flower. However … q decisive role the restraint of the power structures plays a role in the success of the revolution q Pro-American politics after the revolution
Gene Sharp: From Dictatorship to Democracy. Conceptual Foundations of Liberation D. Sharp's book was published in Bangkok in 1993. It became a guide for the organizers of "color revolutions" This book details the tactics and strategy of subversion within "anti-democratic" states. What force can the opposition mobilize to be sufficient to destroy the anti-democratic regime, its military and police system? A common feature of the above examples of the destruction or weakening of dictatorships is the decisive massive use of political defiance on the part of the population. characteristic features which make him highly sensitive to skillfully applied political defiance. The effective overthrow of the dictatorship with minimal casualties requires the fulfillment of four primary tasks: §The resolve, self-confidence and resistance skills of the oppressed population must be strengthened; §It is necessary to strengthen the independent social groups and institutions of the oppressed people; § It is necessary to create a powerful force of resistance; § A wise strategic plan for liberation must be developed and clearly implemented.
Description There are many theories devoted to revolutions, which is not surprising, given the important role they have played in world history over the past two hundred years. Some theories were created at the very beginning of the development of social sciences, the most important of them was the theory of Marx. Marx lived long before the revolutions inspired by his ideas took place. It should be noted that his theory concerned not only the analysis of the conditions leading to revolutionary transformations, but also indicated ways to promote these transformations. Whatever their value in their own right, Marx's ideas had a tremendous impact on the changes that took place in the twentieth century.
Other theories, which also had a major impact, appeared much later and tried to explain both the "original" revolutions (such as the American and French) and subsequent ones. Some researchers have gone further, trying to study revolutionary activity in combination with other forms of resistance and protest. We will consider four theories devoted to the study of revolutions: Marx's approach, Chalmers Johnson's theory of political violence, James Davis's concept of revolution associated with the growth of economic expectations, and finally the interpretation of collective protest proposed by Charles Tilly, a representative of historical sociology.
Marx's theory
Dot Marx's view of revolution is based on his interpretation of human history as a whole. According to his teaching, the development of society is accompanied by periodic class conflicts, which, escalating, lead to revolutionary changes. The class struggle is generated by insoluble contradictions inherent in any society. The source of the contradictions lies in the economic changes in the productive forces. In any relatively stable society, there is a balance between the economic structure, social relations and political system. As the forces of production change, the contradictions grow, which leads to an open clash of classes and, in the end, to a revolution.
Marx applies this model both to the preceding feudal era and to how he foresees the future development of industrial capitalism. The traditional societies of feudal Europe were based on peasant labor. Serf producers were ruled by the landed aristocracy class and small landowners.
As a result of the economic changes that took place in these societies, cities arose in which trade and industry developed. New economic system, which arose in the feudal society itself, became a threat to its foundations. Unlike the traditional serf-master system, the new economic order encouraged entrepreneurs to produce goods for sale on the free market. Finally, the contradictions between the old feudal and new capitalist economies became so acute that they took the form of irreconcilable conflicts between the emerging capitalist class and the landowning feudal lords. Revolutions resulted from this process, the most important of which was the French Revolution of 1789. Marx argues that as a result of such revolutions and revolutionary changes that took place in European countries, the capitalist class managed to come to power.
However, as Marx points out, the advent of capitalism gives rise to new contradictions that will eventually lead to the next series of revolutions inspired by the ideals of socialism and communism. Industrial capitalism is an economic order based on the pursuit of personal profit and competition between firms for the right to sell their goods. Such a system creates a gap between a wealthy minority that controls industrial resources and a dispossessed majority of wage workers. Workers and capitalists are entering into an ever-increasing conflict. Ultimately, labor movements and political parties representing the interests of the working masses challenge the power of the capitalists and overthrow the existing political system. If the position of the dominant class is especially strong, then, as Marx argues, violence must be used to bring about the necessary changes. Under other circumstances, the process of transfer of power may be accomplished peacefully, by parliamentary action, and a revolution (in the sense of the definition given above) will not be needed.
Marx expected that in some Western countries revolutions might take place during his lifetime. Later, when it became clear that this would not happen, he turned his attention to other regions. It is curious that Russia, in particular, attracted his attention. He wrote that Russia is an economically backward society that is trying to introduce modern forms of trade and production borrowed from the West. Marx believed that these attempts could lead to more serious contradictions than in European countries, since the introduction of new types of production and technologies in a backward society contributes to the formation of an extremely explosive mixture of old and new. In correspondence with Russian radicals, Marx indicated that these conditions could lead to revolution in their country, but added that the revolution would be successful only if it spread to other Western countries. Under this condition, the revolutionary government of Russia will be able to use developed economy Europe and ensure rapid modernization in their own country.
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Contrary to According to Marx's expectations, the revolution did not take place in the developed countries of the West. In most Western countries (the exception being the United States) there are political parties that consider themselves socialist or communist; many of them declare their adherence to the ideas of Marx. However, where these parties have come to power, they have generally become much less radical. It is possible, of course, that Marx simply made a mistake in time, and one fine day revolutions will take place in Europe, and in America, and somewhere else. However, it is more likely that Marx's prediction turned out to be wrong. The development of industrial capitalism does not lead, as Marx supposed, to the intensification of conflicts between workers and capitalists.
It certainly does not follow from this that Marx's theory is irrelevant to the modern world. There is an important reason why it cannot fail to matter - Marx's theory has become part of the ideals and values of both revolutionary movements and governments that have come to power. Moreover, some of his views may contribute to the understanding of revolutions in the Third World. The ideas expressed by Marx about Russia are relevant to most of the peasant countries that are experiencing the formation of industrial capitalism. The points of contact between booming industry and traditional systems are becoming hotbeds of tension. People affected by the change in traditional way of life become a source of potential revolutionary opposition to the government, which is trying to maintain the old order.
As the practice of social development shows, the main political forms implementation of overdue economic, social, socio-cultural changes are reforms and revolutions. Political history Russia is rich in examples of both the former and the latter. Studying revolutionary processes, Russian researchers proceed from the totality of theoretical and methodological approaches available in modern political science and sociology. The number of works by Russian authors that contain a political analysis of the revolutionary processes in Russia is very small. In this regard, there is a need to dwell on the basic theoretical concepts of the revolution that have developed within the framework of sociology and political science.
Modern political science and sociology pay much attention to the study of the mechanisms underlying revolutionary processes. The most common definition of revolution belongs to S. Huntington, who considered it a rapid, fundamental and violent change in the dominant values and myths of society, its political institutions, social structure, leadership, government activities and politics. Reforms are partial changes in certain spheres of society, including the political one, that do not affect its fundamental foundations.
Political thought initially considered revolutions exclusively through the prism of an ideological approach. The political ideology of conservatism arises mainly as a reaction to the events of the French Revolution. Describing the bloody excesses of this revolution in his book “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, one of the founders of conservatism, Edmund Burke, formulated the view inherent in this ideology on revolutionary processes like the French one: revolution is a social evil, it exposes the worst, basest sides of human nature. The causes of the revolution are seen by conservatives, first of all, in the appearance and dissemination of false and harmful ideas.
Early liberalism assessed the revolution from completely different positions. The liberal doctrine considered the revolution justified in the event that the government violates the terms of the social contract. Therefore, many representatives of classical liberalism named among the fundamental human rights the right to rebellion. Gradually, under the impression of the extremes of the real revolutionary processes in liberalism, a more cautious assessment of this phenomenon began to take shape.
Even before the French Revolution, attempts were made to combine the idea of communism and socialism with the idea of the revolutionary overthrow of the former political power. During the years of the French Revolution and after it, the number of such attempts increased enormously. The most prominent continuer of the traditions of revolutionary communism was K. Marx. For him, revolutions are "the locomotives of history" and "a celebration of the oppressed." K. Marx created one of the first theoretical concepts of revolution. This concept outwardly looks very reasonable and logically verified. From the point of view of Marxism, the underlying causes of revolutions are connected with the conflict within the mode of production - between the productive forces and production relations. At a certain stage of their development, the productive forces can no longer exist within the framework of the former production relations, primarily property relations. The conflict between the productive forces and production relations is resolved in the "epoch of social revolution", by which the founder of Marxism understood a long period of transition from one socio-economic formation to another. The climax of this period is the actual political revolution.
K. Marx saw the causes of political revolutions in the class struggle, which he considered the main driving force of social development in general. Class conflicts are especially aggravated precisely during periods of socio-economic crises caused by the lagging of production relations behind the productive forces. In the course of a political revolution, the more advanced social class overthrows the reactionary class and, using the mechanism of political power, brings about urgent changes in all spheres of social life.
Marxism saw the revolution as the highest form of social progress, and the reform as a mere by-product of the class struggle. In accordance with Marx's logic of changing socio-economic formations, the political revolution, as it were, drew a line under the process of transition from one such formation to another. The only exception was the highest type of socio-political revolution - the proletarian or socialist revolution. In the course of the socialist revolution, the most advanced class - the proletariat - overthrows the power of the bourgeoisie and begins the transition to a new communist society. K. Marx associated the beginning of such a transition with the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the purpose of which should be to suppress the resistance of the overthrown exploiting classes and the elimination of private property as the main prerequisite for the elimination of class differences in general. It was assumed that the socialist revolution would inevitably take on a worldwide character and begin in the most developed countries, since it required a high degree of maturity of capitalist society and a high degree of maturity of the material prerequisites for a new social order. In practice, however, social development did not go at all as K. Marx imagined. The working-class movement in the countries of Western Europe - namely, K. Marx and F. Engels pinned special hopes on it - in most cases preferred a social revolution social reform. The ideas of revolutionary Marxism found support in such countries and regions that the founders of this trend themselves under no circumstances considered suitable for starting a communist experiment.
In parallel with Marxism in the XIX century. other attempts were also made to create theoretical concepts of the revolution, to explain the causes of their occurrence and the mechanisms of development. An example of this is the book The Old Order and Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville. In contrast to K. Marx, A. Tocqueville saw the causes of revolutions not in the economic crisis caused by the lag of production relations behind the productive forces that had gone ahead. He believed that revolutionary explosions may not necessarily occur as a result of a deterioration in the situation in society. People, according to the thinker, get used to hardships and patiently endure them if they consider them inevitable.
But as soon as there is hope for improvement, these hardships are already perceived as unbearable. That is, the cause of revolutionary events is not the degree of economic need and political oppression in itself, but their psychological perception. From the point of view of A. Tocqueville, this was on the eve of the French Revolution, when the masses of the French began to perceive their situation as unbearable, although objectively the situation in France during the reign of Louis XVIII was more favorable than in previous decades. It was not the despotism of absolute royalty itself, but attempts to soften it, that provoked revolutionary ferment, since people's expectations of an improvement in their position grew much faster than the real possibilities of such an improvement.
A. Tocqueville admitted that France was on the verge of serious changes in the economic sphere and political regime, but did not consider the revolution inevitable in those conditions. In fact, the revolution did the same work that was carried out without it, but at a huge cost to the whole society. The culmination of the revolution was the establishment of a dictatorship that surpassed in its cruelty all pre-revolutionary monarchical governments.
With the emergence of positivist sociology in the middle and second half of the XIX century. revolution began to be seen as a deviation from the normal course of social development. The classics of sociology O. Comte and G. Spencer opposed the idea of revolution to the idea of evolution - gradual social changes carried out through political, economic and social reforms.
Among the sociological concepts of the revolution, the concept of the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto gained great fame. V. Pareto connected revolutions with the change of ruling elites. According to his concept, the elite controls the masses, manipulating their feelings with the help of ideas that justify their own domination. But these funds alone are not enough to maintain power, so the ruling elite must be able to use force when necessary. Such a need may arise in the context of a social crisis, which can be seen as a kind of test for the elite for its suitability for its purpose. V. Pareto believed that the most talented and energetic elements of society should be represented in the elite. Only such an elite, which has an undoubted superiority over the masses, is able to successfully implement its functions. The viability of the ruling elite depends on the way it is formed. If channels of vertical social mobility operate in a society, then it is constantly replenished by the most worthy representatives of the bulk of the population. If the channels of vertical mobility are blocked, then the ruling elite gradually degenerates, and elements embodying impotence, decay and decline, which do not have the psychological qualities that would ensure the preservation of the former regime, accumulate in its composition.
As the incompetence of the ruling elite grows, society plunges into a crisis caused by erroneous management decisions. At the same time, among the lower strata, the number of elements with the qualities necessary for managing society is increasing. These elements are integrated into the counter-elite, unite the masses around themselves on the basis of revolutionary ideas and direct their discontent against the ruling regime. The former ruling elite at a decisive moment is unable to effectively use force and therefore loses power. However, if the mechanism for recruiting the ruling elite is not fundamentally changed, the situation will repeat itself: the degenerate elite will be overthrown again. The cycles of rise and fall, rise and fall are, according to V. Pareto, necessary and inevitable, the change of elites is the law of human society, and its history is a "graveyard of the aristocracy".
The ideas of V. Pareto had a great influence on political science and sociology of the 20th century. In particular, some of them were used by P. A. Sorokin, the creator of the first modern concept of revolution. In his well-known book The Sociology of Revolution, he attempted an objective scientific analysis of the phenomenon of revolution, far from the one-sidedness of an ideologized approach, be it conservative or Marxist. Finding out the causes of revolutions, P. Sorokin studied the behavior of people in revolutionary periods. He believed that human behavior is determined by innate, "basic" instincts. These are the digestive instinct, the instinct of freedom, the possessive instinct, the instinct of individual self-preservation, the instinct of collective self-preservation. The general suppression of basic instincts, or, as P. Sorokin wrote, the "repression" of a large number of them, inevitably leads to a revolutionary explosion. A necessary condition for an explosion is the fact that these "repressions" extend to a very large or even overwhelming part of the population. Just like his political opponent V. Lenin, P. Sorokin considered the “crisis of the lower classes” alone to be insufficient for a revolution. Analyzing the causes and forms of the "crisis of the tops", P. Sorokin, rather, followed the approaches and conclusions of V. Pareto. Like the Italian sociologist, he saw one of the most important causes of revolutionary crises in the degeneration of the former ruling elite. Describing the atmosphere of various pre-revolutionary eras, P. Sorokin noted the impotence inherent in them of the ruling elites, unable to perform the elementary functions of power, and even more so to resist the revolution by force.
In the revolutionary process, P. Sorokin distinguished two main stages: the first, the transition from the normal period to the revolutionary one, and the second, the transition from the revolutionary period back to the normal one. Such cyclicity in the development of the revolution is connected with the basic social mechanism of people's behavior. The revolution generated by the "repression" of the basic basic instincts does not eliminate this "repression", but strengthens it even more. For example, famine is becoming even more widespread as a result of the disorganization of the entire economic life and trade exchange. In the conditions of chaos and anarchy, inevitably generated by the revolution, the danger to human life increases, i.e., the instinct of self-preservation is "repressed". The factors that pushed people to fight against the old regime contribute to the growth of their confrontation with the new revolutionary government, which, with its despotism, further intensifies this confrontation. The requirements of unlimited freedom, characteristic of the initial period of the revolution, are replaced at its next stage by the desire for order and stability.
The second stage of the revolution, according to P. Sorokin, has a pronounced tendency to return to the usual, time-tested forms of life. Such a return can take place both in the form of a counter-revolution, directly and directly rejecting the relations and institutions generated by the revolution, and in a more moderate and selective rejection of some of them. Without denying the fact that revolutions lead to the implementation of already urgent changes, P. Sorokin considered them the worst way to improve the material and spiritual conditions of life of the masses. Moreover, very often revolutions do not end at all in the way that their leaders promise and the people passionate about their goals hope.
In the interwar period, the book Anatomy of a Revolution by the American sociologist C. Brinton became widely known. Based on the historical experience, primarily of France and Russia, K. Brinton singled out several stages through which any great revolution passes. It is preceded by the accumulation of social and economic contradictions that do not find timely resolution and therefore contribute to increased discontent and anger among the majority of the population. Further, the growth of oppositional sentiments among intellectuals begins, and radical and revolutionary ideas appear and spread. Attempts by the ruling class to implement reforms are belated, ineffective, and further intensify social unrest. In a crisis of power, the revolutionaries manage to win, the old regime collapses.
After the victory of the revolution, among its leaders and activists, there is a demarcation into a moderate and a radical wing. The desire of the moderates to keep the revolution within certain limits runs into the growing opposition of the radical masses of the people, who want to satisfy all their aspirations, including those that are initially impossible. Relying on this opposition, the revolutionary extremists come to power, and the climax of the development of the revolutionary process comes. The highest stage of the revolution - the stage of "terror" - is characterized by attempts to completely and completely get rid of the entire legacy of the old regime. K. Brinton, like P. Sorokin, considered the final stage of the revolution to be the “Thermidor” stage. He associated its offensive with "a cure for revolutionary fever." Thermidor comes to a society agitated by the revolution, just as the ebb follows the tide. Thus, the revolution in many ways returns to the point from which it began.
To understand the socio-political processes that have taken place in our country and many other countries of the world in the last century, one should pay attention to the concept of J. Davis and T. Garr, which, in essence, is a modification and development of the views of A. de Tocqueville and is known as the name of the theory of relative deprivation. Relative deprivation refers to the gap between value expectations (material and other conditions of life recognized by people as fair for themselves) and value opportunities (the amount of life's benefits that people can actually receive). The protest is by no means caused by the absolute dimensions of the poverty and misery of the masses. You can find, points out J. Davis, countless historical periods when people lived in constant poverty or were subjected to extremely strong oppression, but did not openly protest against it. Constant poverty or deprivation does not make people revolutionaries; more often than not, they endure such conditions with humility or mute despair. Only when people begin to wonder what they should have in fairness, and feel the difference between what is and what should be, then the syndrome of relative deprivation arises.
J. Davis and T. Garr identify three main paths of historical development that lead to the emergence of such a syndrome and aggravate it to the level of a revolutionary situation. The first way is as follows: as a result of the emergence and spread of new ideas, religious doctrines, values, there is an expectation of higher living standards that people perceive as fair, but the absence of real conditions for the implementation of such standards leads to mass discontent. Such a situation could trigger a revolution of awakened hopes. The second way is in many ways directly opposite to the first. Expectations remain the same, but there is a significant deterioration in the ability to meet the basic necessities of life as a result of an economic or financial crisis, or in the event of a state failure to provide an acceptable level of public safety, or due to the rise of an authoritarian, dictatorial regime. The gap between what people consider deserved and fair and what they have in reality is perceived as unbearable. This situation is called by J. Davis the revolution of selected benefits. The third path combines elements of the first two. Hopes for an improvement in the situation and the possibility of a real satisfaction of needs are growing at the same time. This happens in a period of progressive economic growth, living standards begin to rise, and the level of expectations also rises. But if, against the backdrop of such prosperity, for some reason (wars, economic downturn, natural disasters, etc.) the ability to satisfy habitual needs falls sharply, this leads to a revolution of the collapse of progress. Expectations continue to grow out of inertia, and the gap between them and reality becomes even more unbearable. The decisive factor, according to J. Davis, will be a vague or obvious fear that the soil that has become habitual will leave from under your feet.
However, it should be understood that no classical or modern concept of revolution is capable of fully explaining such a complex socio-political phenomenon. Each of them only reflects individual elements and aspects of the revolutionary processes. A study of the actual practice of these processes and their results allows us to conclude that the revolutions never ended as the revolutionaries themselves dreamed of. Very often, their results turned out to be directly opposite and brought with them even greater injustice, inequality, exploitation, oppression. As a result, towards the end
18th century the myth of revolution as a synonym for progressive change was destroyed. The revolution was no longer the embodiment of the highest logic of history. The influence of ideological doctrines, which still rely on revolutionary violence, has fallen sharply, and sociological and political concepts of social development consider gradual, evolutionary changes as the preferred form of development.
Unresolved socio-economic and socio-political problems in Russia were aggravated during the First World War, so the revolutionary events of 1917 came quite naturally. The February revolution can be most adequately explained based on the concepts of J. Davis and V. Pareto. They see the causes of revolutions in the emergence of a socio-psychological syndrome in the minds of people, the essence of which is the perception of their position as extremely miserable and unfair, which pushes them to revolt against the authorities. This syndrome appears along with increased expectations and the lack of real opportunities to meet the needs formed by these expectations. Another option is the impossibility for some reason to satisfy the usual needs in full. And finally, this syndrome can manifest itself when, as a result of a previous favorable situation, people's expectations increase, and the possibilities of actually meeting the increased needs deteriorate sharply, for example, due to a natural disaster, war or economic crisis. Approximately so it was in Russia on the eve of 1917. The relatively favorable socio-economic situation of the pre-war years was replaced by a progressive deterioration in living conditions during the war. The explosion of popular discontent in February 1917 was connected with this circumstance. This explosion was the reaction of the masses to the long-term suppression by the authorities of the basic, according to P. Sorokin, instincts that determine people's behavior.
However, at the very beginning, the nature of the revolutionary crisis was determined not only by social conflicts "below", but also by the conflict of elites "above". In this regard, we should recall one of the first sociological concepts of the revolution by V. Pareto, who saw the main causes of revolutions in the conflict between the ruling elite and the counter-elite, challenging the former for the leading position in society. With the degradation of the former ruling elite and as a result of this decrease in the effectiveness of managerial decisions, society enters a period of crisis. At the same time, the most capable representatives of the masses are being integrated into the counter-elite, which is declaring its claims to power. Real revolutionary processes, of course, have much more complex dynamics and are caused by very diverse factors. One of these factors is the conflict of elites.
In the Russian reality of the beginning of the XX century. the signs of such a conflict are quite clear. The ruling elite of autocratic Russia in the last period of the empire's existence was aristocratic in origin. If we recall the names of officials who held ministerial or other important positions in the power structures of the Russian Empire of that period, we can note that the same names are often repeated. This clearly shows how narrow was the circle of applicants for the highest positions in the state. Blood relationship with the ruling dynasty was a factor that accelerated the promotion to the highest positions in the state hierarchy. Of course, there were channels for recruiting people from the middle and lower strata of the nobility and even the “lower” classes into the ruling elite, but this was only possible as a result of slow progress up the steps of the bureaucratic ladder, and the speed and success of promotion depended by no means only on the business qualities of a person. , but also from family ties and the ability to serve the authorities.
The composition of the ruling elite of the then Russia, the methods of its recruitment determined its main qualities. First of all, this is conservatism, manifested in a distrustful and even hostile attitude towards any innovations, even those that came from the emperor himself. The isolation of the elite inevitably led to its degradation, expressed in the appearance of frankly weak and incompetent people in the most important government posts, in a decrease in the level and quality of managerial decisions and, as a result, a deterioration in the situation in those areas that these decisions directly affected.
The tendency towards the degradation of the ruling elite especially intensified during the First World War. Russia's unpreparedness for war, the disorganization of the supply of the population and the army, the progressive crisis of the transport system were associated with the miscalculations of the ruling circles, the inability of the bureaucratic apparatus of the empire to cope with urgent problems. The most clearly named tendency was revealed during the period of Rasputinism, when the patronage of an ignorant old man became the criterion for appointment to high positions. This situation sharply aggravated the conflict between the aristocratic-bureaucratic elite, which was in power, and the opposition counter-elite, which was actively formed in previous years, and was quite broad in its composition.
For the integration and political and organizational design of the counter-elite as a result of the revolutionary events of 1905-1907. a favorable situation has arisen. On the one hand, the emergence of conditions for the legal activity of non-radical political parties and the introduction, albeit a truncated one, of the institution of parliamentarism in the form of the State Duma for the first time created a sphere of public policy autonomous from the state. But, on the other hand, the principles of formation of executive power structures remained unchanged. Thus, a situation arose that allowed some of the liberal politicians to openly declare their views and proposals on issues of social development, but deprived them of the opportunity to have a real impact on the solution of these problems.
The detachment from the real government of the country gave rise to a kind of inferiority complex among the ambitious representatives of the "public" (which the leaders of moderate opposition parties considered themselves to be). This complex was expressed in constant and, perhaps, not always fair attacks on the "ruling bureaucracy". The confrontation between the “public” and “authorities” intensified with the outbreak of the World War. As already mentioned, many of the difficulties that befell Russia with the outbreak of hostilities were the result of insufficient competence and irrational managerial decisions of the then ruling elite. Naturally, the counter-elite could not fail to take advantage of this situation in order to even louder declare their claims to participate in solving the most important problems facing the state and society. These claims have even been institutionalized in two main forms. Firstly, in the form of the Union of Zemstvos and Cities (Zemgor) created with the active participation of liberals and right-centrists, and secondly, in the form of the Progressive Bloc formed in the State Duma, which included the majority of deputies of the lower house, primarily representatives of the parties of the Cadets and Octobrists. Declaring its support for the course of waging war and remaining loyal to the allied duty, the Progressive Bloc, as a kind of payment for such support, put forward the demand for the creation of a "responsible ministry." That is, in the midst of hostilities, the pre-war claim of the counter-elite to their participation in the executive power was once again openly declared by forming a government accountable to the State Duma.
The oppositionists sought to achieve their goals by an apex coup. Even the monarchists, concerned about the fate of the monarchy, considered it possible to save it by entering into a secret conspiracy to kill Rasputin - the main, from their point of view, the culprit of the impending socio-political crisis. Among the leaders of the Progressive Bloc, the idea of a conspiracy also arose more than once, but which had a different goal - the elimination of the power of Nicholas II in one way or another. Not only many members of the opposition, but also those who stood close to the helm of power, pinned their hopes on the emperor's brother, Mikhail Alexandrovich. It was believed that, having become regent for a minor heir, he would meet the aspirations of "society" and satisfy all the political and economic demands of the Progressive Bloc, while maintaining loyalty to the allies and bringing the war to a victorious end.
Considering the above circumstances, it is possible to better understand the mechanism of the events of February 1917. Numerous facts testified that the country had accumulated a huge potential for a social explosion, but it seems that there was no fatal inevitability of the collapse of the existing system at the turn of winter and spring of 1917. The crisis caused by the war coincided with the conflict between the old and new elites, which left its mark on the way and form of its resolution. Seeing the unrest as a threat to the stability of the state, the leaders of the Duma opposition decided to save the situation by a long-planned combination with the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne.
However, the events took such a turn that all previously built plans were destroyed. Nicholas II unexpectedly abdicated not only for himself, but for his son. The old government collapsed overnight, making room for those who had long been eager to try their hand at governing the country. At the very beginning, the February Revolution really looked like a classic change of ruling elites; according to V. Pareto, the old elite left, or rather, fled in the literal sense of the word, and the new one took its place. But this, perhaps, is where the similarity with the theoretical concept ends. Although the first composition of the Provisional Government was personally the same “responsible ministry” about which representatives of the Progressive Bloc spoke so much, the effectiveness of its activities was no higher than that of the previous administration. University professors and lawyers from the capital turned out to be no better than the tsarist bureaucrats, who were so zealously criticized by them. Of course, the failures of the Provisional Government were also explained by the difficult situation in the country, but one cannot discount the lack of real managerial experience, as well as the lack of special knowledge of the newly minted ministers and other government officials.
When investigating the problems of the Russian revolution, one should not forget the fact that, perhaps for the first time in history, a revolution was not only a spontaneous social explosion of the lower classes, but also the result of the conscious activity of radical organized groups. Russian intelligentsia back in the 19th century. was fond of the ideas of revolution and socialism, which, as was shown, not so much contributed as hindered the implementation of the tasks of modernizing the country (see chapters III and V). By the end of the XIX century. Marxism becomes the most influential ideological doctrine among the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. For the historical fate of Russia, this was of great importance. The fact is that Marxism originated in the West at a time when many European countries were experiencing the most dramatic moments of industrialization and monopolization. The Industrial Revolution created a large class of urban industrial workers whose situation was very difficult. Mid 19th century was marked by mass social movements based on urban workers, many socio-political concepts appeared that appealed to them and spoke on their behalf. Marxism was at first one of them, but then it gained wide popularity and support. At the same time, it was not so much the workers themselves who became adherents of Marxism, but intellectuals. The influence of the revolutionary ideas of Marxism in the working environment depended on the level of material well-being of the workers themselves and the degree of economic and, as a result, political stability.
By the time the Marxist doctrine finally took shape, the situation of industrial workers in the most industrialized country of the then world - England - had improved, and therefore the British workers were not interested in the revolutionary ideas of Marxism. Engels had to write with bitterness that the British workers think about politics in the same way as the British bourgeoisie. The founders of Marxism saw the reason for the change in the class consciousness of the English proletariat in its "bribery" by the ruling class through the exploitation of the peoples of the British Empire.
However, in many other countries that have reached high levels economic development, the radical mood of the working class was on the wane. More attractive than revolutionary slogans were the ideas of social partnership. If in the 19th century in a number of countries mass social democratic parties arose, oriented towards revolutionary goals, then later these same parties evolved in a reformist direction, completely abandoning the Marxist ideology. The emergence and spread of Marxism in Western Europe did not coincide with the most dramatic period of modernization in the Western European countries.
In Russia, the situation was different. Here is the life of city workers at the end of the 19th century. was very similar to that described in F. Engels' famous book The Condition of the Working Class in England. A unique situation has developed: on the one hand, numerous problems and contradictions have been revealed that are characteristic of any society that has entered a period of modernization, but has not completed it; on the other hand, a radical intelligentsia was formed, carried away by the ideas of revolution and socialism. A significant part of this intelligentsia enthusiastically met the teachings of K. Marx, the perception of which was prepared by the already existing socialist tradition. It should be noted that the spread of Marxism in Russia fully corresponded to one of the most fundamental features of Russian political culture - the confrontation between "soil" and "Western" tendencies. This confrontation, being a product of the socio-cultural split of Russian society, was first reflected in the struggle between the Slavophiles and Westernizers, and then among the socialist-minded Russian intelligentsia. Since the 1880s The socialist movement in Russia was divided into populists and Marxists, who personified the soil trend, and believed that the model of the socio-economic and political development of Western Europe was universal and would inevitably be repeated in Russia.
However, not all Russian Marxists turned out to be consistent Westernizers. There was a split in the Russian social democracy. The Mensheviks, led by the prominent Russian Marxist G. Plekhanov, remained faithful to orthodox Marxism and, consequently, became the successors of the Western tradition. In contrast to the Mensheviks, the "soil" current of Russian Social Democracy was personified by the Bolsheviks. The emergence of the ideology of Bolshevism is associated with the name of V. Ulyanov (Lenin).