Engels says that two great discoveries are at the heart of Marxism: the materialist understanding of history and the law of surplus value. The materialistic understanding of history is the basic law of society, the law of surplus value is the basic economic law of capitalism.
The materialistic understanding of history, the principle of historical materialism, proceeds from the fact that that the basis of the existence and development of society is the production and reproduction of human life.“Neither I nor Marx,” writes Engels, “never claimed more.”
The production and reproduction of human life is conceptual, methodological, historical and humanistic foundation of social life.
Conceptuallymaterialistic understanding of history is a logical consequence of the concepts of the dialectical-materialistmonism - the unity of materialism and dialectics. If the concept of dialectical-materialist monism is a sufficient basis for a realistic understanding and consistently scientific knowledge of the world, then the concept of a materialistic understanding of history is a sufficient basis for a realistic understanding, consistently scientific knowledge, organization and management of society as part of the world. The dialectical-materialistic understanding of history (society) is based and follows from the dialectical-materialistic understanding of reality - the world. These two concepts are scientific Marxism as opposed to trends, determine the real contribution of Marxism to the development of advanced thought. The fact that these concepts have not received further substantiation and development does not reduce their conceptual and methodological significance.
The materialistic understanding of history builds materialism to the top, considers society as one of the forms of matter, and social life as one of the forms of the movement of matter. It makes it possible "... starting precisely from ... the production of immediate life ... to understand ... civil society at its various stages" . “Materialism in history becomes not a hypothesis ... but a scientifically verified theory ...” The materialistic understanding of history - the production and reproduction of human life - is therefore the basic law of society or a general sociological law, that it establishes the historical and logical limits in which it proceeded, flows and will continue to flow, to which the whole infinite variety of forms and the multitude of spheres of social life of all living and living people has been reduced, is reduced and will be reduced. The reproduction of human life frames, encompasses all historically existing and existing socio-economic forms, "drives" them inside itself and subordinates them to itself, giving them an assessment according to one criterion: whether these forms contribute or do not contribute, provide or do not provide these forms with the rational reproduction of human life. . The materialistic understanding of history - the reproduction of human life - appears as a cornerstone, as the beginning from which everything comes, and the end, to which everything descends, as the alpha and omega of an individual, society, humanity.
Methodologically the principle of historical materialism appears as an axiomatic prerequisite for realistic understanding, structural-logical knowledge and constructive-dialectical modeling of society. This principle makes it possible to move from an unsystematized description to a logical definition of the place for each phenomenon, helps to “bring order to the “relevant facts” and becomes “synonymous with social science” . The principle of historical materialism is a precious method of understanding, knowing, organizing and managing society. Lenin highly appreciated the significance of this discovery. He wrote: “The greatest achievement of scientific thought is historical materialism Marx. Chaos and arbitrariness, which have hitherto reigned in views on history and politics, have been replaced by an amazingly integral and harmonious scientific theory ... ”, since Marx reduces the general that lies in things and relations to its most generalized logical expression. “Materialism in history,” writes V. I. Lenin, “never claimed to explain everything, but only to indicate “the only scientific ... method of explaining history”, because without it “... History has always had to be written, said Marx, guided by some scale lying outside it; the actual production of life seemed to be something prehistoric, and the historical production something detached from everyday life, something standing outside the world and above the world. The methodological significance of the materialistic understanding of history - the principle of historical materialism - lies in the fact that it "... is, first of all, a guide to the study ...". The principle of historical materialism - the production and reproduction of human life - should be an axiomatic premise and guiding star research of any social phenomenon in any field at any historical stage - from the Paleolithic to technological civilization, from the primitive communal system to communism and at any logical level - from the individual to the global.
Historicallythe Marxist concept of the materialistic understanding of history - the production and reproduction of human life - appears as an awareness and axiomatization of previous historical experience. It quintessentially the result of twenty-five years of searching for an answer to the mystery of social life, gives it a starting point and an ultimate goal, and must determine and direct the daily activities of man and mankind. The Marxist concept of the materialistic understanding of history reduces the infinite variety of phenomena of individual and global life to a common foundation - the reproduction of human life.
Historically, the reproduction of human life has been and is at the heart of prehistoric and historical society. The difference lies in the fact that in prehistoric society - under the primitive communal system, the reproduction of human life was carried out directly, clearly, palpably, visible. The shape matched the base. In a historical society, as a result of accumulated and accumulated materialized labor and, accordingly, a complicated and complicating social organism - in class civilizations - the reproduction of human life has been and is being carried out indirectly, in transformed forms, intangibly, it is refracted by the objective complexity of society and the subjective logic of class interests; in social, political, ideological objective transformation and subjective perversion. Class formations mediate the reproduction of human life, but do not cancel it. The form does not match the base. In historical society, the reproduction of human life has become "something standing outside the world and above the world." Prehistory was treated and is treated not as a logical foundation of history and modernity, but as a passed and forgotten stage. Prehistory was taken and is taken not in logical-qualitative, but in historical-temporal certainty. History has become the history of ideology, political struggle, but not the reproduction of human life in concrete historical, socio-political forms. The reproduction of human life has soared and soars as a prerequisite, but is not a conceptual beginning and an independent object of study. Attention is paid to the study of external, visible transformed forms.
Today, as a result of the tragically aggravated ecological, economic, demographic situation, the reproduction of human life again, as in prehistoric society, emerges as a direct basis, pushing back, driving socio-economic forms inward.
Marx and Engels considered it their merit to return to the monistic view of the ancient Greek materialist philosophers. We need to return to the materialistic understanding of history in its first, original basis - the reproduction of human life.
humanisticallythe concept of a materialistic understanding of history reflects and expresses the highest meaning and value of human life, sets the ultimate and constantly renewed goal and determines the humanistic means of achieving it. It subjectively predetermines conceptual and methodological positions in ideology, social structures and political interests. The materialistic understanding of history serves as a humanistic criterion for the value of political doctrines and party programs. It establishes the unity of the individual and generic man, the unity of each act and the ultimate meaning of human life. The generic person exists in each individual person, through an individual person. The reproduction of human life presupposes, therefore, the reproduction of a generic person as a separate and separate person as a generic one, or the reproduction of an individual person is carried out through a family, clan, tribe, nation, humanity, and the family, clan, tribe, nation, humanity are reproduced through an individual person. Humanistic complementarity and interpenetration of an individual and a generic person in the process of reproduction of human life excludes or should exclude both altruism - the absolute and dissolved existence of one person in another, and egoism - the absolute alienation of one person from another.
The concept of a materialistic understanding of history is real humanism, which finds its reflection and completion in the communist ideal. The theory of scientific communism can only be developed on the basis of a materialistic understanding of history, on a theoretical study and political affirmation of the most optimal forms and norms for the reproduction of human life. The materialistic understanding of history, humanism, communism are concepts of the same order.
This concept makes it possible to rethink the whole history, to determine the role, significance and value of worldview systems from one angle - the reproduction of human life, which is the norm and criterion of the social position and behavior of a person, estate, class, nation, humanity.
The concept of a materialistic understanding of history underlies the humanization of the relationship between man and man and man with nature, and underlies the humanization of technological progress. Humanistic rethinking of history through its materialistic understanding is a condition for the humanization of modern man's relationship to reality.
However, it should be noted that the humanism of the reproduction of human life is the highest human egoism in relation to nature. Since the substance of nature is completely indifferent in what form it exists: in inorganic, organic or social, then the optimization of the reproduction of human life egoistically alienates the social form from all the others. Consequently, the humanism of the reproduction of human life is only the humanism of man or human life-affirmation at the expense of other forms. Therefore, we need not just humanism and not just the reproduction of human life, but rational humanism and rational reproduction of human life, or we need reasonable egoism of the dynamic balance of man with nature in the process of reproducing his life.
So, the concept of a materialistic understanding of history - the production and reproduction of human life - contains: conceptual attitudes of views on social life; methodological premises of knowledge, cognition and modeling of human structure; closes the historical, heuristic knowledge of society and man and opens the way for logical, scientific knowledge and management of social life; humanistically reflects and expresses the highest meaning and value of human life.
However, this concept did not receive further scientific development, which caused significant theoretical and practical damage to the building of communism. Its role has been reduced to serving a historically specific political doctrine that does not follow from a materialistic understanding of history. There is not only a political obstacle, but also a theoretical difficulty. The concept of a materialistic understanding of history cannot be developed by her own, bypassing the concept of dialectical-materialist monism, the sad fate of which is the statement of the unity of materialism and dialectics without the following conclusions from it.
The law of surplus value reflects and expresses the driving force and goal of one specific mode of production - the capitalist one, and in its original material basis - the surplus product - the driving force and goal of all estate-class, exploitative formations, reveals the dominant role and determining value of the economic factor in the system of material reproduction of human life.
The two great discoveries of Marxism oppose and complement each other.
The opposition stems from the difference in the tasks they solve. For Marx, the materialistic understanding of history was a methodological device for analyzing capitalist production, but not an independent object of study. His dislike for eternal truths coexisted perfectly with the highest abstractions. The objective complementarity of the two great discoveries took the form of a subjective opposition of economic reproduction to other factors of the material reproduction of human life.
The complementarity of the two great discoveries of Marxism is contained in the expression "capitalist society". "Society" as a subject outside the definition is considered in accordance with the materialistic understanding of history, which is what Marx does in The German Ideology. "Capitalist", as a predicate, is considered as an independent subject, in accordance with the law of surplus value, which is exactly what Marx does in Capital. Thus, the expression "capitalist society", through each concept in it, includes both discoveries of Marxism. "Capitalist society" as a subject and a predicate acts as a "thing in itself" - society, and "a thing for us" - capitalist as a materialistic understanding of history and the law of surplus value, like "German ideology" and "Capital". The materialistic understanding of history acts as the basic law societies. The law of surplus value acts as the main economic the law of the capitalist formation. The relation between the materialist conception of history and the law of surplus value is the relation between the two sides within the limits of "capitalist society", it is the relation between foundation and form. Marx's enduring merit lies not only in the fact that he discovered surplus value as an abstract basis for various concrete forms of income: entrepreneurial income, commercial profit, loan interest, rent, but also in the fact that he discovered the materialist understanding of history as an abstract basis for various, concrete socio-economic formations: the primitive communal system, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, communism. Just as the law of surplus value was an independent object of study for Marx, so the materialistic understanding of history - the production and reproduction of human life - should also be an independent object of study.
Historically, formations replace each other, and society, with its daily concerns of the reproduction of human life, remains unchanged. Or formations replace each other only because there are always daily concerns for the reproduction of human life. Hence society, taken in the unity of foundation and form, reproduction of human life and socio-economic formation and is changing and does not change, remains the same and not the same.
The task of "revealing the anatomy of bourgeois society" as one of the socio-economic formations could be accomplished with the help and on the basis of the principle of historical materialism, that is, such a principle that unites and identifies all formations. Hence the principle of historical materialism historically and logically precedes the law of surplus value.
Historically, Marx and Engels develop and set forth the beginnings of a materialistic understanding of history in the "German Ideology" in 1845, and Marx develops and sets out the law of surplus value in "Capital", volume I of which was published in 1867.
Historically, class formations were preceded by a long period of classless society. This period lasted about 35 thousand years, so against this background, the time of estate-class civilizations of 3-3.5 thousand years is, if not negligible, then not significant. The period of estate-class civilizations with their antagonism of interests, the logic of gold and damask steel should not obscure the long period of a classless society with its direct basis reproduction of human life. The content of this period - the direct reproduction of human life - enters modernity as a logical foundation, acting in an indirect, transformed form. Starting a logical analysis of society, Marx follows its history. Therefore, in order to understand modern society, “the whole history must be studied anew.”
Logically, from the materialist understanding of history, Marx derives the labor theory of value as the basis for understanding class relations, their role and place in society. Based on the labor theory of value, a theory of surplus value is being developed.
The historical sequence of discoveries determines their logical sequence.
However, the importance attached to these "two great discoveries" was not equivalent. As a result of the sharpest class battles of the 19th and 20th centuries - the intellectual and physical self-mutilation of Europe - the main attention was and is being paid to the law of surplus value.
The materialistic understanding of history received less attention and was given less importance. They tried and are trying to politicize and economize it.
Thus, if the objective-logical principle of historical materialism and the law of surplus value represent a kind of unity in Marxism, then subjectively-historically, if they were not opposed to each other, then they were considered and developed unevenly, which created and creates a contradiction in Marxism, gives ground for opposition of the young Marx to the mature Marx.
The materialistic understanding of history was set forth in an explicit form, as already noted, in the "German Ideology", given over to the "gnawing criticism of mice" that were not slow to appear and had their followers.
The law of surplus value found its justification and comprehensive development in Capital, which is a logically completed work and, in the perception of Marxism, determines its appearance. Marxism appears as its one economic side and is perceived as economic materialism, and Marx only as an economist.
This narrows Marxism, belittles its significance as the only consistent scientific worldview, leaves room for "rumors and distortions", and diminishes the importance of Marx as a thinker.
Thus, in the development of Marxism, a historical and logical contradiction was outlined in the 19th century and developed in the 20th century between the materialistic understanding of history and the law of surplus value, between the production and reproduction of human life and the economic factor - one of the parameters of this production and reproduction, between production for man and man for production.
Leaving aside the law of surplus value and abstracting from the materialist understanding of history, it is necessary to consider the very concepts of "historical materialism" and "materialist understanding of history".
The concepts of "materialistic understanding of history" and "historical materialism" as a reflection and expression foundations of life and development of society not strict. Because of the word "history". In the expression "Historical understanding of history" the emphasis is on development without specifying the subject. The concepts of "materialistic understanding of society" and "principle of social materialism" would be more precise and stricter. If, however, to be even more rigorous and take not the associative community of people - society, humanity, with which it is impossible to logically operate, but the individual person in his generic universality and use, accordingly, not the deductive-natural-philosophical, but the inductive-dialectical method, then the expression should be "materialistic understanding of man", the essence of which is not the reproduction of human life, but the reproduction of man. It is not life that absorbs a person, but a person lives.
Comment:the only example of an inductive-dialecticalof method in the social sciences is Marx's Capital. Marx begins his research not with social production as a whole, but with an individual commodity, in which, in an undeveloped form, the whole system of relations of social production is contained. The dialectical development of the commodity gives the whole variety of real production relations. This can be compared with a religious person who, together with God, was given an undeveloped world within himself, that is, he was given an undivided Unity with God and in God, which may or may not be. developed.
The same inductive-dialectical method must be applied to man in his inductive-general universality, the dialectical development of the sides of which will give all the richness of real social relations. This should be the subject of research proposed by I. T. Frolov "institute of man." One should not retreat from the won positions of Marx's inductive-dialectical method.
However, one can confine oneself to the expression "materialistic understanding of society, always keeping in mind the "materialistic understanding of man."
Why did Marx use the expression "materialistic understanding of history"? This is due to the fact that the European style of scientific thinking of the late 18th - early 19th centuries, and especially its German version, accurately reflected the state of Europe, which emerged from the stagnation of the Middle Ages with their religiously frozen, theologically complete worldview. After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the rapid development of Europe begins. The society seemed to have shifted. The connection of times is realized: the historical spiritual and cultural continuity with Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, the Ancient East, and society is not conceived otherwise than only in historical development, in striving forward. The search for its teleological meaning, its ultimate goal, begins. A historical retrospective view showed that society at any given moment is a product of history. History is perceived not only as a society in time, but also as a methodological method of understanding and cognition of society. For the European style of thinking, history has acquired a self-contained meaning. The subject "society" was replaced by its predicate "history". In addition, the struggle of the working class to establish a classless society demanded historical movement, development, striving forward. The change of formations acted as a world-historical regularity, which became a logical and moral imperative. For Marx and Engels, society was always present in the expression "materialistic understanding of history", but speculatively. Marx writes: "In the theoretical method, the subject, society, must constantly hover in our mind as a prerequisite." However, the subsequent dominant, continual-pluralistic style of thinking focused on movement, development, history, without specifying what is moving, what is developing and what is in historical change.
The substitution of the subject by the predicate began as early as the followers of Aristotle. Marx blames Hegel for this. The ancient Greek monistic tradition was forgotten. It did not correspond to the historically moving European society.
Thus, if for Marx and Engels the expression "materialistic understanding of history" was historically conceptually sufficient as a reflection of the style of thinking corresponding to their era, and society was assumed, then we need to have "supposed" in the expression itself.
So, the materialistic understanding of history proceeds from the fact that the basis of the existence and development of society is the production and reproduction of human life, which has a logical structure: the material reproduction of human life and the intellectual reproduction of human life.
intellectual
reproduction
human life
material
Each of these reproductions has its own logical structure:
I. Material reproduction:
1) reproduction of human life through birth - genital reproduction;
2) reproduction of human life through the consumption of means of subsistence - existential reproduction;
3) reproduction of human life through the production and reproduction of the environment - ecological reproduction;
4) the reproduction of human life through the production of means of subsistence and the means of production necessary for this - economic reproduction.
II. Intelligent reproduction:
1) moral relations between people - the moral reproduction of human life;
2) social relations between people - social reproduction of human life;
3) ideological relations between people - the ideological reproduction of human life;
4) political relations between people - the political reproduction of human life.
According to the spheres of reproduction of human life, the sciences historically arise and logically exist:
Eugenics- the science of the reproduction of human life through birth according to the laws health.
Dietetics- the science of the reproduction of human life through the consumption of means of subsistence according to the laws natural history norms.
Ecology- the science of the reproduction of human life through the preservation of the habitat according to the laws thrift.
Economy- the science of the reproduction of human life through the production of means of subsistence and the necessary means of production according to the laws benefits and profits.
Ethics- the science of moral relations between people according to laws of good.
Sociology- the science of social relations between people according to laws justice.
Ideology- the science of ideological relations between people according to the laws truth and truth.
Politics- the science of political relations between people according to laws proportionality interests.
The general ethical and general aesthetic orientation of the sciences reflects the creative and creative orientation of human activity in all spheres of the reproduction of one's life.
Each of the spheres of reproduction of human life: genital, existential, ecological, economic, moral, social, political, ideological has its own dialectic within itself: parameters and structure. With the introduction of the social element of the reproduction of human life and the subjective-dialectical logic of correlating opposites in contradiction, the parameters outline, determine the possible options for a person’s relationship to reality in all their complexity and inconsistency. This is the structure of man, taken as the initial logical basis. This foundation establishes the framework within which the infinitely plastic, infinitely diverse, relativistically real, shimmering with infinite facets of the practice of reproduction of human life takes place, is carried out. This is the first social philosophy, just as ontology is the first philosophy according to Aristotle.
In The German Ideology, the materialistic understanding of history is presented as a logical structure, which is established "purely empirically" and contains three sides" material reproduction of human life. Marx focuses on only on material reproduction. The three sides "have existed together since the beginning of history, since the time of the first people, and which are still valid in history even now" . “Three sides ... should be considered not as three different stages, but only as three sides, or ... as three “moments” of the material reproduction of human life.
First side.Marx says: “The family ... was at the beginning the only social relationship”, the function of which “... is to produce other people ... this is the relationship between husband and wife, parents and children - the system of marriage and family relations. "Husband - wife" - marital relations, "parents - children" - family relations. Taken together, marriage and family relations constitute the genital reproduction of human life. The fact that Marx does not introduce this term does not change the essence of the matter. The reproduction of human life through birth as a "side" of material reproduction does not cease to exist from this.
Gentile reproduction - the continuation of the human race - is an indispensable prerequisite for social existence and development, which is established "purely empirically." Without the continuation of the human race, the history of human society is inconceivable. The hereditary continuity of generations is the pivotal line of history.
Phylogenetically, man is a product of the natural development of matter - the brainchild of nature. But nature does not repeat its creations, does not restore broken threads.
Ontogenetically, the responsibility for the genital reproduction of human life - the hereditary continuation of the human race - its quantitative and qualitative parameters, lies entirely with the living generations.
Second side.Marx says: "The first premise of all human history is ... the existence of living human individuals," an existence that requires means, the consumption of which reproduces human life. A person must breathe, drink, eat, have clothes, dwelling. For this, in external nature there are: aerosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, from which a person genetically arises and due to which he exists every second. “Any historiography,” emphasizes Marx, must proceed from these natural foundations and those of their modifications to which, thanks to the activities of people, they undergo in the course of history. In this case, Marx emphasizes the genetic priority of consumption over production. "From the first day of his appearance ... man must consume daily, consume before he begins to produce and while he produces."
Through the consumption of means of subsistence, the daily personal existential reproduction of human life is carried out. On this basis, a way of life is formed - a mental warehouse and a way of life, customs and traditions of people.
With the inability of society to solve the problems of everyday-personal existential reproduction of human life through the consumption of means of subsistence: clean air, clean water, food, clothing, etc., all social conflicts and upheavals begin, kingdoms and states are destroyed.
Third side.When there are no ready-made means of subsistence in nature, they begin to be produced: mined and processed, that is, to carry out the economic reproduction of human life. The production of means of subsistence is the first act of human history. “This is such a historical matter,” writes Marx, “such a basic condition of any history, which (today, just as it was thousands of years ago) must be carried out daily and hourly - already for the sole reason that people can live” . "Production of material goods", being "the first act of human history", underlies the development of society as a condition of its existence. “People,” writes Marx, “have a history because they have to produce their own life...”. Consequently, it is not history that should be the object of study, but the “production of ... life” in history “produced” by man, that is, the reproduction of human life in changing historical conditions, which are themselves a product of human activity.
Thus, in the process of production of means of subsistence, a person, unlike an animal, not only appropriates - extracts, but also creatively transforms, processes and cultivates what nature gives him. Creatively transforming, processing and cultivating what nature gives to man, he creatively transforms, processes and cultivates himself, society and civilization. Man acts as a creator, equal to God.
According to Marx, genital reproduction is the first step, existential reproduction is the second, economic reproduction of human life is the third step in man's material relationship to reality.
Gentile, existential and economic reproduction of human life - these are, according to Marx, "three sides" in the system of material reproduction of human life from its very beginning to this day.
Based on the fact that phylogenetically man is a product of the natural development of matter - the brainchild of nature, to the "three sides" of the material reproduction of human life, one should add the initial, natural environment, as a general condition for his "daily and hourly existence", which must be reproduced by man - ecological reproduction of human life.
Historically, the ecological reproduction of human life was perceived by "common sense" as a self-evident basis, as an axiomatic premise that did not require either attention or development, and only recently, as a result of the aggravated ecological situation, does it begin to be realized as a necessary and independent side of material reproduction. human life. The ecological reproduction of human life implies the production of a natural and social environment adequate to human nature, which should be a product of social production with its own means of production and labor force. Modern history shows that the geographical (ecological) environment is a category not only natural, but also social, which is becoming increasingly important, and in the future it can also acquire a dominant significance - the global role of the main link in earthly civilization, as indicated by the "limits of growth » of the Club of Rome, as well as data on the depletion of the gene pool of the biosphere and the catastrophically rapidly deteriorating state of the aero- and hydrosphere of the Earth - these are the general conditions for human existence.
Thus, ecological reproduction is an objectively necessary "fourth" side of the material reproduction of human life, which has its own structure, logic, parameters, settings. However, henceforth, when analyzing Marx's theory of the material reproduction of human life, we will use the "three sides", meaning the "fourth".
The “three sides” are the totality of “those general laws of motion that, as dominant ones, make their way in the history of human society, ... which are clearly or obscurely, directly or in an ideological, perhaps even in a fantastic form, reflected in the form of conscious motives in the minds of the active masses and their leaders ... is the only way leading to the knowledge of the laws that prevail in history in general and in its individual periods or in individual countries ... ". Therefore, “when elucidating any historical reality, it is necessary ... first of all, to take into account the indicated basic fact in all its meaning and volume and give it the place it deserves” for understanding “ terrestrial foundations of history". Exactly "... inside of these “three sides” “the mode of production is moving ...” (our italics. - V. B.).
What methodological and practical conclusions can be drawn from the above provisions of Marx?
First, the "three sides" form a single system of material reproduction of human life. Each of these aspects can and should be considered both independently and in interaction and interpenetration with other hundred ronami. As a result, a most difficult the internal structure of the material reproduction of human life, the development of which will require the efforts of dozens of research organizations, and the three sides are just the tip of the iceberg.
Second, the "three sides" are empirically valid premises. They are “not arbitrary,” they are not introduced into people's lives from outside, they are not established a priori, but appear as the result of an a posteriori generalization of people's entire historical experience. Scientific... knowledge begins with background research which "common sense" ... seem to know. Scientific knowledge begins with premises and ends with premises. "Common sense" is the logic of naive realism, in the end, coincides with the logic of scientific realism. However, "common sense" - naive realism, perceives the logic of the material reproduction of human life directly, and scientific realism indirectly through a generalized history of human society.
The greatest merit of Marx is that he establishes the unity of “common sense” and science, naive and scientific realism, direct and indirect knowledge, by the empirical reliability of the premises, not excluding, of course, their differences.
Thirdly, the unity of the historical and the logical follows from the material reproduction of human life. "Three sides" - the first in appearance and significance in the history of society and man should be the first in value and in the logic of the study of modern society. The materialistic understanding of the history of Marx requires the adjustment of reference points in the study of society. The beginning and basis of the study of modern society should be taken as an unchanging basis, the “three sides” of material reproduction and explored as one or another socio-economic form refracts, modifies the basis, and this modification will become the criterion of the truth of one or another socio-economic form. It's Time to Stop Exploring Socio-Economic Forms on their own and give them their own meaning. Explore society in form, not forms of society. Form undoubtedly has either a stimulating or a destructive effect on the material basis of society. And yet, the form is not introduced, but derived from the material basis of society. This makes it possible to move from a relatively historical, pluralistic to a structural-logical, monistic method of studying society, to allow combining the course of the historical development of society with the logical development of thought. Historical deployment, the development of the simplest structure of society - the "three sides", gives the key to the logical assimilation, control and regulation, organization and management of the developed and developing, complex and increasingly complex structure of modern society. Thus, the logical study of society is a transformed form of its historical development.
Fourthly, the "three sides" of material reproduction have existed since the very beginning of history, since the time of the first people, and which still exist today.
By this, Marx establishes a common basis for all times and all peoples, a basis that does not change from the development of productive forces - economic growth and technical progress. Marx casts a penetrating glance through the entire history of society, through all economic epochs, sifts out everything historically transient, crystallizes and axiomatizes the initial premise – society should be understood materialistically, in the totality of its “three sides”. These "three sides" act as absolute truth, the beginning and end of individual activity and social practice. This conclusion of Marx, surprising in its boldness, simplicity and depth, provides a solid basis for the study of modern society and the ethical evaluation of political doctrines.
Fifthly, the system of material reproduction of human life, which is unified with itself, develops synchronously both between spheres and within the spheres of social reproduction due to the operation of the Leninist law of unevenness. In different peoples and in different historical epochs, the role of the main link (weak or strong) in the system of material reproduction of human life has been and is played by one or another "side": demographic, everyday-existential, economic, ecological. For practice, it is important not only to know the system of material reproduction of human life as a whole, but also to be able to allocate the main link at any moment, in any place, under any circumstances and in any state of the system, by grasping which it would be possible to stretch the entire chain. Strengthen, as well as destroy the system of material reproduction of human life, both public and personal, from a weak link according to the logic of vulnerabilities. So, Marx's conception of the materialistic understanding of history provides reliable rational guidelines for social practice. The scientific management of society follows from it and must be based on it. All today's acute national and global problems are reduced to the destructive asynchrony of the interaction of the "four sides" of the unified system of material reproduction of human life.
Sixth, with the discovery of a materialistic understanding of the history of the material reproduction of human life, Marx overcomes historical, transformational pluralism, which requires every researcher of his era to start all over history, to search for and put forward the “universal foundations of science”, to invent his own “programming ideas” about man and society, build their own "globalist" concepts. With the discovery of a materialistic understanding of history, Marx rationalizes historical thinking. Attempts to create fundamental social concepts bypassing and contrary to Marx are scientifically fruitless. What can be higher for a man than himself than the reproduction of his life? It is only necessary to consistently scientifically phenomenologize this "absolute idea" to the "heavy forms" of a real social process and rationally subordinate the social process to this "absolute idea".
Seventh, with a materialistic understanding of history, Marx establishes the dialectical unity of simple and complex - a simple, abstract, internal foundation - the reproduction of human life and complex, concrete, external forms of realization of this foundation. Thus, with the materialistic understanding of history - the material reproduction of human life - Marx makes the boundless - visible, the diverse - one, the amorphous - structural, the infinite - finite, the implicit - explicit, the internal - external, the unknowable - knowable. With a materialistic understanding of history - the material reproduction of human life - Marx affirms the principle of simplicity. Lenin speaks of repeatability. As a general conceptual and methodological setting, this principle was put forward by Occam and was called Occam's razor. Heuristically, the principle of simplicity underlies all scientifically valid premises, theories and laws. The materialistic understanding of history appears as an awareness and axiomatization of historical experience. It provides a scientific basis for social practice.
Eighth, with a materialistic understanding of history, Marx axiomatizes the material unity of the world: the material unity of nature and society, finds a common basis for their development and the absolute dependence of man on nature, whatever the socio-economic form, provides a basis for the conscious subordination of man to nature and restructuring society in accordance with the laws of reason and beauty, as a reflection and expression of harmony and substrate symmetry of the universal principles of existence, opens the way for "fitting" a person into the universal circulation of matter. The constitution and nomologization of the material basis of society, the establishment and legitimization of the material unity of society and nature (the unity of the public and the natural) in theory and practically“compresses” the problem of the reproduction of human life.
So, with a materialistic understanding of history - the "three sides" of the material reproduction of human life - Marx closes the experimental-heuristic period of the existence and development of society and opens the scientific-rational period.
However, translating intuitively conscious experience into a clearly presented and constructively stated theoretical awareness is a difficult and lengthy business. Marx laid the cornerstones. Do not bypass them, do not bypass them. Why did such a materialistic understanding of history not develop further? Yes, because Marx has other his interpretation.
But before proceeding to consider a different interpretation of the materialistic understanding of history, it is necessary to implicitly consider religion from the standpoint of a materialistic understanding of history, the "three sides" of the material reproduction of human life. This is due to the special historically transient role of religion in the reproduction of human life.
“Three sides” of the material reproduction of human life “existed,” writes Marx, “from the very beginning of history, from the time of the first people ...” and were reflected and expressed in the historically developing forms of ideology: mythology and religion. It would be interesting to trace the refraction of the "three sides" in each of these forms of ideology, but let's focus on religion.
"Three sides" of the material reproduction of human life, in the period of the religious worldview, were reflected and expressed in the Law and dogmas. Therefore, the attitude towards religion should be ethically respectful and scientifically correct. It must be dialectical.
Religion is a realistic-fantastic worldview. The dialectical approach requires seeing in religion not only a fantastic, irrational, but also a realistic, rational hypostasis, which are the “three sides” of the material reproduction of human life, which have taken a fantastic, irrational form of expression and representation. Religion is thus an irrational rationality, distorted, but reality.
The modern reproduction of human life is irrational in its positivist scientific and technical rationality. If religion is irrational rationality, then modern positivist ideology is rational irrationality. Many modern scientists are well aware of this. If in religion the rationality of the reproduction of human life made its way through the creationist irrationality of the structure, movement, development, cognition and transformation of the social world, then the modern reproduction of human life on the basis of a pluro-positivist ideology with the seeming everyday rationality of social practice threatens to destroy life itself.
If religion, to use Marx's expression, is "absurdity within the limits of common sense," then the positivist, natural-science, technological ideology is common sense within the limits of absurdity.
The religious, realistic-fantastic worldview was and is based on generalization and consecration centuries of experience in the reproduction of human life.
To the extent that religion generalized the centuries-old experience "from the very beginning of history", to the extent that it realistically understood it, it considered the material conditions for the existence of people in the full structure of the "three sides", without limiting or reducing it to any one .
Religion, in its realism, gave clear and unambiguous guidelines and guidelines for behavior in all spheres of the reproduction of human life and demanded their strict observance under pain of mortal Sin and eternal torment of Hell.
Hell is a morally violent principle of organization terrestrial people's lives under pain of punishment even after death.
Paradise is a morally and financially encouraging principle of organization terrestrial people's lives in compliance with the rational parameters of the reproduction of human life.
But religion not only generalized, but also sanctified a positive centuries-old experience and consecrated on behalf of the universal principle, the single creator - God, and this is its fantastic and irrational nature. In addition, religion has its own socio-political expression - it is the church, which is a political institution.
As a political institution, the church has its own material interests: church tithes, monastic lands, church donations - and unites in them with concrete historical interests.ruling and exploiting estates and classes and become their servants. In the protective function, the church has far from divine goals and not the goals of the reproduction of human life.
The struggle of advanced forces against the oppression of the ruling and exploiting estates and classes: feudal lords, capitalists and speculative politicians automatically became a struggle with the church as their ideological and political ally. The struggle with the church became a struggle with a fantastic, irrational religious worldview. The French enlighteners Voltaire, Holbach, Helvetius, Diderot, D'Alembert gave a more brilliant and witty than a deep and meaningful criticism of religion.
Theologians have centuries of experience in practical and theoretical speculation. Proceeding from the objective realistic-fantastic duality of religion in everyday sermons to the flock, they emphasize the fantastic and divinity of the Law and dogmas. In ideological disputes with theoretical opponents, they rest on the realistic side of religion, on the generalized and codified historical experience of the reproduction of human life, on the need to use it in the daily practice of people's social life.
Religion has another very strong side. It is a natural result and an objectively necessary stage in the historical development of social consciousness - the formation of the world spirit. Proceeding from the unity of phylogenesis and ontogenesis, the unity of the human race and the individual, proceeding from the unity of the formation of the world spirit and the spiritual formation of an individual, every young person in his spiritual development must, is obliged to go through all the previous stages of development of social consciousness. Religious, theologically-monistic perception of the world is the simplest and as a stage in the spiritual development of a young person cannot and should not be bypassed before being given a realistic, ontologically-monistic picture of the world. Without a religious picture of the world, it simply will not be understood. With the mythological stage of the historical formation of public consciousness, it is easier. We learn it in fairy tales and legends. It is more difficult with the religious, because for many it is historically and logically the last form of a complete worldview. Positivism is pragmatic-technocratic. The scientific outlook, realistic in content and constructive in form, has not developed, although its foundation has been laid. Not the cornerstones, but the foundation!!! All historical forms of social consciousness: mythological, religious, pluri-positivist, scientific, must exist, exist and will exist. simultaneously with the priority of the latter as historically progressive, absorbing and developing the realism of previous forms. The simultaneous coexistence of all ideological forms is based on the fact that people will never be spiritually the same, but they will always need the completeness of the world either on a mythological, religious, natural or scientific level. It is important that the priority of the progressive form is respected. Priority, not dominance.
Historically, in the bitterness of the class struggle and the discrediting of the church as a political institution, religion has been discarded as a politicized worldview. But along with the outdated fantastic element of religion, the generalized realistic experience of human existence, the “three sides” of the material reproduction of human life, was also thrown out, discredited, forgotten. In addition to discrediting religion through its church class politicization, religious, fantastic-creationist perception and explanation of the world was blown up by natural science, which proves not the theological, but the material unity of the world. Religion retreated, but did not give up its positions. Religion can be done away with only when its rational moments are taken from it, scientifically substantiated and politically approved in the daily practice of the reproduction of human life. To isolate the rational side of religion from the need for "Occam's razor", that is, dialectics. This will pay tribute to the creators of religion, who were deep thinkers, but who clearly understood that there could be no other ideological form of organizing people's lives at that historical period. It is possible that the creators of religion consciously enveloped, dressed the rational moments of the generalized historical experience of the reproduction of human life that they understood in an irrational, mystical form, simple, accessible and convincing for every person, making the World simpler through God.
When Lenin said that the articles should be understood by the simple worker, he was reproducing the principle of bygone centuries.
With a materialistic understanding of history, Marx does not discover, but only revives the rational factors of the reproduction of human life after centuries of difficult, oppressive, all-withering scholasticism, scientific theosophy and speculation, all-consuming mysticism and polemical idle talk with a clear orientation of the dominant ideology towards moral humiliation, intellectual destruction and physical destruction of opponents.
Marx puts the material reproduction of human life on a solid conceptual and methodological basis of dialectical materialist monism.
The Bible, Koran, Ganzhur, Talmud should be read from the angle of a materialistic understanding of history, the "three sides" of material reproduction, and then they will appear not as revelations, but as books of wisdom and guidance on the reproduction of human life.
However, as mentioned above, Marx has a different interpretation of the materialistic understanding of history.
As is known, the manuscript of The German Ideology, where the principle of historical materialism is set forth in a sufficiently detailed form, was not published during the lifetime of the authors. For the first time, the materialist understanding of history was published by Marx in the "Preface" in the "Critique of Political Economy" in 1859, but in a different interpretation. He writes: “In the social production of their life, people enter into certain, necessary, relations independent of their will - relations of production, which correspond to a certain stage in the development of their material productive forces. The totality of these production relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which the legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. So, the “real basis” of society is the economy, the essence of which is the totality of ... production relations. The interpretation of the material basis of society, given in the German Ideology, has been modified. The gentile reproduction of human life through birth, the existential reproduction of human life through consumption - "the existence of living human individuals" - are omitted from it. The emphasis is only on the economic factor of material reproduction or the material reproduction of human life. mixed to the economic, which suppressed and eliminated the genital and existential reproduction. They disappeared. Everything was economised. Man has turned into a one-dimensional being, has become an "economic man". All people are "producers". This laid the “theoretical foundation” for the subsequent disruption of the structure of the material conditions for the reproduction of human life. The material reproduction of human life was identified - identified with the economy.
Social materialism became economic, and Marxism became economic materialism. This curtailed Marxism, opened the field of accusations of its lack of morality and belittling the value of human life. The economization of the material reproduction of human life narrowed the base of the revolutionary demands of the proletariat, reduced the goals of transforming bourgeois society to economic demands, and excluded the possibility of perceiving Marxism as a comprehensive monistic doctrine. The combination of a material basis - three factors - with an economic one, or the issuance of one economic factor as a material basis, theoreticallyski disarmed the practice of building socialism, reduced the entire system of social relations to economic, production.
Economism is such an ideological position, such a theoretical simplification, which proceeds from the fact that all problems in all spheres of the social reproduction of human life can only be explained from an economic point of view and solved as a result of economic growth, and today technical progress as a converted form of economic growth. And only now we are beginning to vaguely realize that the economy - economic growth and technical progress did not solve, do not solve and will not solve all the problems of the reproduction of human life. The economy, as it turned out, is an important, but not the only factor in material reproduction.
The material basis has been replaced by the economic factor. Why?
Marx needs neither justification nor our defense. The pretentious approach, to put it mildly, is not correct. Lenin is right when he says that historical figures should be judged by what they have contributed to the development of human thought, and not by what they have not done. But it is necessary to understand why the complex structure of the material reproduction of human life has been replaced by one economic factor. Therefore, one should consider the scientific character and tendentiousness in Marxism, and then the peculiarities of the development of the productive forces of Russia, in order to show that Marx's tendentious conclusions found fertile ground in economically backward Russia.
The critical style of thinking involves a structurally dissected approach to the phenomenon. Therefore, Marxism must be considered from two dialectically opposite sides - scientific and tendentious, from the side of a real contribution to the development of advanced scientific thought about society and the world, and from the side of the concrete historical tasks of the political struggle of the proletariat in XX century. I 10th and 20th centuries Marx himself, speaking of Capital, calls these aspects "positive exposition" and "tendentious conclusions."
To do this, it is necessary to split, dialectically divide Marx into Marx the scientist and Marx the politician, Marx the theorist and Marx the practitioner. In Marxism it is necessary to isolate goal marxism- the establishment of a humane, rationally directed and managed society that provides optimal conditions for the reproduction of human life, and Marxism means- class struggle, revolutionary upheaval, dictatorship of the proletariat, the destruction of class and classes. The fact that in the Russian experience prevailed and dominated Marxism means, there is our an intellectual and cultural misfortune, not the fault of Marx. To accuse someone of not having thought of something is useless and unworthy, but to understand Marxism and isolate in it scientific and tendentiousness, scientifically unchanging and historically transient, a real contribution to the development of advanced scientific thought and emotional-political, scientific-constructive and politically destructive, to divide Marx into dialectical Marx and speculative Marx, Marx, who saw man as an end and Marx, who saw man as a means - really necessary. This approach stems from the objective conceptual inconsistency of Marxism, from the inconsistency any social doctrine.
The historical and logical development of the initially undivided Marxism leads to an objective opposition between scientificity and tendentiousness.
So, to Marx through Marx, mastering Marx through overcoming Marx.
The historical sieve separates the wheat from the chaff. The deeper the time, the more often the sieve. Not many ideas passed through the final historical sieve. They fit in a handful. Among them are the ideas of Marx and Lenin. Marx owns the idea of the unity of materialism and dialectics - the concept of dialectical-materialist monism and the materialistic understanding of history - the principle of historical materialism. Lenin owns the law of unevenness and the concept of self-promotion and self-development of everything that exists through the interaction of opposites. Lenin's concept of self-promotion and self-development of all things absorbs into itself the Marxist concept of dialectical-materialist monism, objectifies the unity existing and shows the mechanism of its movement and development - the interaction of opposites. Parcels of Marx and Lenin enough for the development of a scientific picture of the world, for its consistent scientific knowledge, for the development of rational attitudes in all spheres of social practice. The fact that these premises did not receive further theoretical development is again not the fault of Marx and Lenin.
Our historically unsettled, uncritical, spontaneous-alternative style of thinking presupposes extremes: either take all of Marx or discard him all. To the extent that yesterday we uncritically took it all together with the automatic historicism of the change of formations, the class struggle and civil war, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the industrial and political fetishization of the worker, etc., that is, with everything that constitutes Marxism means, to the same extent today we throw away and Marxism as a goal. We reject the concept of dialectical-materialist monism and the materialist understanding of history, without which the understanding and knowledge of the world, the understanding, knowledge and organization of social life is inconceivable. We are left with nothing.
We are being pulled towards positivism. But we do not have the historical experience of owning it, and, apparently, it is not necessary to follow in the footsteps of the West. Positivism is also tendentious.
We must to take from Marx the scientific nature, the unchanging, real contribution to the development of advanced scientific thought about the world and society. We must take the Marxism of the goal - the reproduction of human life and overcome in it and in itself tendentiousness, passions, transient, destructive, Marxism means.
tendentiousness there is a reduction of the general to the particular, or the issuance of the particular for the general. Tendency is one-sidedness.
Marxism as a philosophy in our country, and in the West as well, has been sociologized. A world view is a view of the WORLD as a whole, consisting of the natural world and the social world, a view of the WORLD real, consisting of nature and society; view of the "World of God", as they said in the past, consisting of the world not made by hands and man made.
The sociologization of the worldview means mixing WORLD as a whole to the social world, WORLD real to society, and "the world of God" to the man-made world. Hence the absolutization of historical practice and class struggle. Marx's well-known eleventh thesis on Feuerbach states that "philosophers only in various ways explained world, but the point is to change it.” Marx focuses on changing the world. What kind of world can we change? Only social. We cannot change the whole natural world, move the stars from their orbits, reshape the Cosmos.
Philosophers explained WORLD as a whole, WORLD real, "God's world".
So, it is necessary to explain the WORLD as a whole, and to rebuild only its part - society. Marx writes that philosophers explained the WORLD, but it is necessary to change it, that is, this WORLD. There are three points here: 1. Marx reduces the WORLD to society, and raises society to the WORLD. 2. If before Marx philosophers only explained the WORLD as a whole and did not change the social WORLD, that is, they were theorists without practice, then Marx radically changes the historical and logical premises: yesterday they only explained, today we only change; Yesterday we only theorized, today we only act. Hence, in the political life of Russia in the 20th century, there appeared some kind of special passion for action without thought, for practice without theory, which brought to life a retrospective rehabilitation, soul-saving repentance and "reverse providence." 3. With the eleventh thesis, Marx removed from his followers the responsibility and intellectual obligation to explain and explain the WORLD as a whole, the WORLD in itself, the WORLD in itself and doomed them to justify and play along with the pluro-relative practice.
Thus, the social practice of restructuring the foundations of society as a part must stand on a solid THEO-rhetical WORLD as a whole, or sociology must stand on philosophy, and not philosophy must be reduced to sociology.
The sociologization of philosophy stemmed from the sharpness social contradictions of the epoch, from the political tasks of the proletarian parties. Philosophy as a science of the WORLD as a whole was of interest to Marx not in itself, but as an instrument of political struggle. Although for any emerging personality and society as a whole, philosophy is an independent value. However, not only philosophy was used to analyze the class struggle, but also the concrete historical features of the class struggle were transferred to philosophy, disfiguring it.
Marx understood universal- the highest kind of all that exists. But for Marx, the universal was not objectified, subjective, while in the history of human thought the highest genus was always objective. So Lao Tzu has the DAO, Heraclitus has the LOGOS, Anaxagoras has the NUS, Aristotle has the BEING, Philo of Alexandria has GOD, Hegel has the ABSOLUTE IDEA. Marx used unity natural and public. The absence of an object in the highest genus coexisted perfectly with the objectivity of any logical subject in Capital.
In the worldview, Marx and his followers could not stay at the point of a holistic - natural-social perception of the world, while monotheistic religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Islam - in a personified being - the highest kind of everything that exists - Christ, Buddha, Allah all the time remained and remain on the point of view of a holistic, closed, anthropomorphic perception of the WORLD.
Concrete-historical poignancy social contradictions involuntarily attracted and pulled Marx's thought from a holistic perception of the world to society, made this perception one-sided, redistributed Marx's intellectual energy in his favor. Engels' attempts in the last years of his life to return to the consideration of ideological problems were not crowned with success. In the "Dialectics of Nature", as the name implies, one, alternative to society, part of the integral WORLD is considered - nature.
The WORLD is not given its due, it is not given what it deserves. The consequence of this was that we do not see the WORLD, and, accordingly, any subject in general we do not know limits its parts. We lack contemplation, not philistine, but scientific.
The sociologization of the WORLD sociologized dialectics as well. From the science of structure, movement, development and cognition Total IS, from the science of purposeful, rational-constructive, creative-creative activity for the reproduction of human life, it has become an instrument of class, political struggle, the "algebra of revolution". Having no ontological basis, dialectics became speculative, from triadic it became dyadic. She lost the subordinate subject and left arbitrarily correlated predicates. Disappeared in dialectic before l relations of opposites, which opened up an endless space for options and endless possibilities for theoretical speculation and sophistical tightrope walking; substitution of the subject by the predicate and the predicate by the subject. Hence the tautology - blind logical rings. What kind of criticism can there be when everything flows? Criticism is possible with strict premises.
With the concrete historical antagonism of classes, dialectics was also antagonized. It is taken from her only that the opposites oppose and discarded them addition and mutual transition. There was a truncation of the dialectic. She was primitive. A truncated dialectic is no longer a dialectic.
Sociologization, politicization, antagonization of dialectics discredited it. This gave K. Popper reason to say that “thanks to dialectics, Marxism has grown into dogmatism, which is flexible enough to try to avoid further criticism using the dialectical method.”
The dogmatization of Marxism occurred because of the fear to look realistically at the facts of life, and not because of dialectics, but because of its truncation, that is, its mortification. This is not the flexibility of real mutually transitional things and their aspects, this is operating with concepts, and not with things and their aspects with the help of concepts.
Dialectics was not only sociologized, but also mathematized, that is, it was replaced by its own part. Dialectics did not receive its development either upwards - into its pure forms, nor downwards - into the heavy forms of reality and was pushed aside by mathematics. Dialectics works in six-dimensional space, and mathematics works in three-dimensional space. Dialectics requires a greater power of abstraction than does mathematics. Dialectics is a discipline of thought as a reflection of order in the WORLD.
In 1858, Marx wrote to Engels: “If there ever was time again ..., I would with great pleasure set out on two or three printed sheets in a form accessible to common human reason that rational which is in the method which Hegel discovered but at the same time mystified.
In 1868, Marx wrote to Dietzgen: "... when I throw off the economic burden, I will write "Dialectic"".
In 1883, immediately after Marx's death, Engels wrote in a letter to Lavrov: “Tomorrow I will finally have time to devote a few hours to a cursory review of all the manuscripts left to us by the Maurus. I am especially interested in the essay on dialectics, which he had long wanted to write.
Engels was aware of the significance of the proposed "essay". Marx did not carry out his intention.
Marxism, as a political movement of the dispossessed, was left without a developed and constructively presented philosophical system.
Christianity, as a political movement of the disadvantaged, had, according to its era, a developed worldview system, a set of laws and dogmas, and their fairly clear presentation in the Bible.
To the extent that the WORLD is reduced to society, society is reduced to material reproduction - the basis.
Society, as you know, has two sides - the material basis and the spiritual superstructure; accordingly, a double reproduction is carried out: material and intellectual.
intellectual
Reproduction
human life material
Each of the presented reproductions has its own dialectical-logical structure.
So, intellectual reproduction in itself has:
According to Marx, all spheres of intellectual reproduction hard are determined by material reproduction and can only be explained from the standpoint of the material basis. Hard determinism provides an opportunity to digress from intellectual reproduction. The fact that material reproduction in the end defines the intellectual does not mean at all that in every moment influence cannot but be reversed. The reduction of the reproduction of human life as a whole to material reproduction at the expense of intellectual infringement impoverished Marxism, but gave it a high level of class activity and political mobility.
Derivation of moral relations between people directly from material reproduction also impoverishes them theoretically and simplifies them practically.
Society materializes. From here, Marx reduces consciousness - intellectual reproduction to matter - material reproduction and identifies society with material reproduction.
Thus, intellectual reproduction: moral, social, ideological, political as an independent— have been neglected.
To the extent that society is reduced to material reproduction - the basis, material reproduction is reduced to the economy.
The material, as well as intellectual, reproduction of human life has its own dialectical-logical structure:
The material reproduction of human life has not one, but four closest spheres: genital, existential, ecological and economic reproduction, each of which has its own system of definitions within itself. In "Capital" the concepts of "material reproduction" and "economy" are identical. Marxism has become economic materialism.
The economization of the material reproduction of human life became a conceptual and program provision in the Soviet era. "The materialistic understanding of history proceeds from the fact that the basis of the entire history of society is the development of the productive forces." The reduction of the material production of human life to an economic factor, or the presentation of the economic factor as the material reproduction of human life, was connected with the economic position of classes in the class struggle, which was of interest to Marx. Based practical tasks of the political struggle of the parties, such "training" of the material basis, if it cannot be justified, then it can be understood. But what is good for the struggle for power is not enough for the constructive creation of a new system after the seizure of power. The reduction of the material reproduction of human life to the economic factor determined the face of Marxism, it began to be perceived in a "truncated and skewed form." Engels's attempts in recent years to expand the material basis at the expense of genital reproduction and straighten out the bias that has developed in favor of the economy had little significant result.
The economization of the material reproduction of human life resonated with the peculiarities of the economic and political development of Russia and gave the result that we have.
To the extent that the material reproduction of human life is reduced to the economy, the economy is reduced to the sphere of material production.
Marx proceeded from the fact that social production consists of two spheres: the sphere of material production and the sphere of circulation. The sphere of circulation, in turn, consists of the sphere of commodity circulation and the sphere of monetary circulation.
Marx constantly emphasizes the social priority of the sphere of material production over the sphere of circulation. This is reflected in the fact that surplus-value is produced by wage-workers only in the branches of material production and is distributed as profit on commercial capital and as interest on money capital. Labor only in the sphere of material production is productive. Labor in the sphere of circulation is not considered as such. According to Marx's division of production into the material and the sphere of circulation, all those employed in social production are divided into historically complete and inferior, with progressive and regressive social status. Those employed in the sphere of material production are people of the highest historical values, the proletariat, the subject of revolutionary transformations of society. Employed in the sphere of commodity and monetary circulation and in the service sector are a burden on society.
Our Soviet statistics is the only one in the world that adheres to this methodological approach. This is a genetic material, not a predicative-functional approach, so our statistics are not comparable to any other.
Marx's socially biased interpretation of the economic reproduction of human life led to the reduction of the economy to material production, downgrading and leaving in oblivion the sphere of commodity and money circulation, the service sector. But Marx solved one problem - he raised the worker employed in the sphere of material production to a world-historical height - the dictatorship of the proletariat and the establishment of a classless society. Political tendentiousness comes through clearly.
The structure of our capital investments strictly corresponds to Marx's methodology.
To the extent that the economy is reduced to the sphere of material production, material production itself is reduced to industry.
Material production, consisting of industry, agriculture, transport, communications, science for Marx was reduced to industry, which became the epicenter of the economy, around which all industries and spheres revolve. Industry is the material basis of capitalism. Agriculture is the material base of feudalism. If capitalism overcomes feudalism, then industry overcomes agriculture. Agriculture disappears in its old capacity and remains as a branch of industrial production.
Agriculture interested Marx insofar as capitalism grew out of feudalism and insofar as the survivals of feudalism in the form of land rent held back its development. Marx considered industry to be the material basis of capitalism. Thus, agriculture performed a historically service function, served as a source of funds for the emerging and developing industry.
Marx's socially tendentious interpretation of material production, reducing it to industry, belittled other spheres. This again was due to the emphasis on the role of industrial workers, their concentration and organization to fight for the establishment of a classless society.
To the extent that material production is reduced to industry, industry itself is reduced to the production of means of production.
Why does Marx give such a numbering to the divisions of social production? Why is the production of means of production first, and the production of means of subsistence - second subdivision? Is this a coincidence, or is there some logic to it?
From the point of view of the materialistic understanding of history, the reproduction of human life requires means of subsistence in the form of food, clothing, housing, etc. Therefore, logically, the production of means of subsistence is first by designation, a unit of social production - it must be and first by number. This is how Marx looked at the ratio of subdivisions, at least until 1863. In a letter to Engels on July 6, 1863, the ratio of the production of subsistence and means of production is presented:
The genetic structure looks like this:
Let's see how the previous level enters the next one:
People, existence, means of subsistence, means of production.
Reading in reverse order of numbers, we get: "the means of production of the means of subsistence of people." (The expression “means of production”, taken by itself, is incorrect, there is no subject here. Means of production of what?) This position is fully consistent with the materialist understanding of history. AT such interpretation means of production are deprived of their own purpose and independence and are absolutely subordinate to the production of means of subsistence, and this predestination has the meaning and significance. The study of any society, any formation should begin and end with the premise - the existence of people, which is the beginning and end of all human productive activity in all spheres.
But why does Marx put first subdivision of the production of means of production? Why does it contradict the materialistic understanding of history? Because in "Capital" Marx poses a practical-political task: on the basis of an analysis of the economic situation of classes and their relations, to show and prove transient character of capitalism last exploitative system. Marx needed history, its movement, striving forward in order to close the circle of historical development: from primitive communism (“golden age” according to Hesiod), through a series of exploitative formations, to scientific communism.
Marx considers intermediate exploitative formations to be unnatural, contrary to the nature of man as a rational being. Marx considers the entrance to the stage of scientific communism as the return of society to its natural path.
Marx rushes time, spurs it on!!!
Marx's task is to find material the carrier, the engine of historical progress, is found in the material sphere of production, leading to a historically “natural” change in socio-economic formations. And he finds this driving force, this historical locomotive in the productive forces, the material element of which are the means of production. Their movement, their development is a historical deployment, quantitative growth and qualitative technological transformation and is not chronological, a actual social history of a person.
The movement and development of the means of production predetermine the need for a change in socio-economic forms. If Darwin a posteriori states the evolution of the organic world, then Marx a priori "legitimizes" the death of capitalism. The production of the means of production becomes the main driving force put by Marx in the FIRST place in historical progress and establishing classless communist society. The production of means of production becomes by value and number first department of social production.
Marx is characterized by a mirror, geometric symmetry of the past and the future, primitive and scientific communism with darkness in modern times. As the great Dante said: “We can only clearly see the distance, but in the present our gaze is full of confusion.”
Golden past |
gloomy the present |
Radiant future |
primitive communism |
Capitalism |
Scientific communism |
The circle is closed. The absolute humanistic idea of primitive communism, having made a historical fall into exploitative formations, through the FIRST subdivision returns to itself in scientific communism.
The absolute Hegelian idea, having made historical development through the productive forces, the material carrier of which is first subdivision, at the level of industrial production, has found its subjective embodiment in the working class, whose dictatorship will resolve all contradictions. The degree of illusion is directly proportional to the degree of hopelessness. As Lermontov said: "In my soul I created a different world, And other images of existence ...".
The fact that the worker creates more value than the equivalent of the value of the necessary means of subsistence is characteristic of any, and not only capitalist production. The capitalists undermine social stability by exhausting workers and by failing to maintain the economic mechanism in dynamic equilibrium. In the early period of capitalist society, the bourgeoisie was unable to ensure the stable economic reproduction of human life. These problems remain today. The workers paid with a high rate of surplus value for the incompetence and mistakes of the bourgeoisie. This created a special socio-psychological environment.
Marx proceeds from the axiom of social antagonism under capitalism, therefore he focuses on I volume where the degree of this antagonism is translated into the quantitative language of the norm of surplus value. The real, concrete historical poverty of the working class was explained and quantified in terms of the degree of exploitation. The bourgeoisie was dealt a blow. She had to turn to the eternal laws of production, organization, management and rationalization, technological progress, which are irrelevant to the socio-economic form.
III volume of "Capital" could downplay the propaganda and agitation effect among the workers, which gave I volume. Settling on I In other words, Marx consciously and tendentiously wanted to take everything from him in terms of the political implementation of the revolutionary doctrine. For Marx's political struggle, the degree of exploitation of workers - the rate of surplus value - was preferable to the efficiency of the functioning of capital - the rate of profit. Revolutionary tendentiousness was preferable to scientificity.
The difference in the meaning given by Marx I and III volumes of Capital, is also expressed in his letter to Schott: “... I began Capital ... in the reverse order compared to how it will appear before the public (starting work from the third, historical part), only ... the first volume, to which I started last, was immediately prepared for printing, while the other two volumes remained in raw form ... ".
Thus, in the course of work on Capital, as it approaches I In addition, politicization and socio-economic actualization were growing.
On the issue of the first chapter I Volumes of Capital. As is known, this is the most informative and the hardest chapter to read. One poet called it a poem. Presented in a carbuncle-difficult way, it was an obstacle to the further development of the subject. Lenin had every reason to say that after half a century no one understood it. The insistent requests of Engels and others to present it in an accessible form had no effect. Marx apparently intended to start reworking it. So, in a letter to Danielson on June 13, 1871, he writes: “I will deal with the “first chapter with pleasure ...”, but on November 9, 1871, Marx writes to him: “It is useless to wait for the revision of the first chapter ...”. Marx devoted all his attention and all his strength to political propaganda Volume I.
The politicization of the economic factor of the reproduction of human life has taken place. Tendency has triumphed.
The tendentiousness of Marx's scientific conclusions proceeded from the absolutely historical predetermination of the death of the capitalist system, which, as a dominant, determined the course of any of his reasoning. Historicism pressed on him like an external coercive force. Therefore, any subject studied on its own was ultimately brought under the common denominator of the death of the capitalist formation. The death of capitalism for Marx was, in the words of Lenin, "an axiomatic prejudice." In essence, he always needed this conclusion, but he came to it not directly, but indirectly, through an analysis of various aspects of bourgeois society. Hence this duality arises: the scientific nature of the consideration of the subject in itself and the tendentiousness of political conclusions. “As for the book itself, two points should be distinguished: a positive presentation ... and tendentious conclusions ... The first is a direct enrichment of science, since actual economic relations are considered in a completely new way - with the help of a materialistic ... method. Concerning trends the author, here again, it is necessary to distinguish the following. When he proves that modern society, considered economically, is fraught with a new, higher form, he only reveals in the social field the same gradual process of transformation that Darwin established in the field of natural history in the field of nature. Letters on Capital. M., 1986. P. 140.
The family is a specific social institution in which the interests of society, family members as a whole and each of them individually intertwine. Being the primary cell of society, the family performs functions (from Latin functio - action) that are important for society, necessary for the life of every person.
Under the functions of the family understand the areas of activity of the family team or its individual members, expressing the social role and essence of the family.
The functions of the family are influenced by such factors as the requirements of society, family law and moral standards, real state assistance to the family. Therefore, throughout the history of mankind, the functions of the family do not remain unchanged: new functions appear, the previously arisen ones die off or are filled with other content.
Currently, there is no generally accepted classification of family functions. Researchers are unanimous in defining such functions as procreation (reproductive), economic, restorative (leisure organization, recreational), educational. There is a close relationship between the functions, interdependence, complementarity, therefore, any violations in one of them affect the performance of the other.
The function of procreation (reproductive) is the biological reproduction and preservation of offspring, the continuation of the human race. The only and indispensable producer of the man himself is the family. Inherent by nature, the instinct of procreation is transformed in a person into the need to have children, take care of them, and educate them. At present, the main social function of the family is to meet the needs of men and women in marriage, fatherhood and motherhood. This social process ensures the reproduction of new generations of people, the continuation of the human race.
The words "family" and "parenthood" usually stand side by side, since the birth of a new life is the most important meaning of marriage. This is a tradition that comes from the depths of centuries: if there is a family, then there must be children; if there are children, then their parents must be with them.
The main function of the family is the reproductive function. This is the biological reproduction of the population, the continuation of the human race. In recent years, this feature has attracted everyone's attention. Currently, more than half of families have one child or no children at all (10% of couples are childless). The reasons are the spread of the urban lifestyle. Two-thirds of the population now lives in the city. At the beginning of the century, 7 children out of 10 were rural. Another reason is that there used to be a high mortality of children. To reproduce the number of parents, it was necessary to have 5-7 children. “God gave, God took”, and now there are 2-3 children, which means that after a sharp decrease in child mortality, the birth rate has also decreased. Now it is possible to plan how many children you can raise - 9 out of 10 children grow up. Demographers believe that for a simple reproduction of the population, it is not enough for a family to have 2 children. After all, not every man becomes a father, and a woman becomes a mother. It is estimated that the population consisting of two-child families loses a third of its size in about 3 years. This means that half of the families need to have 3, the rest - 2 children each, and in order for the number to increase, it is necessary that more than half of the families have 3 children each
But there are a number of social functions of the family:
Household - maintaining the physical condition of the family, caring for children and the elderly; Traditionally, women were in charge of the household, men were engaged in handicrafts
Economic - obtaining material resources of some family members for others, material support for minors and the elderly; traditionally, women ran the household, men were engaged in crafts.
Primary socialization and social control - the responsibility of family members for the behavior of its members in society, the family is the first and main social group that actively influences the formation of the child's personality. The family helps the child to enter society, teaching the traditions, culture, norms of behavior adopted in a particular society. The family influences the formation of the psychological sex of the child. In the first three years, this influence is decisive, because it is in the family that the irreversible process of sexual typing takes place, thanks to which the child learns the attributes of the sex assigned to him: features of emotional reactions “Boys do not cry”, tastes, behavioral patterns - “fight like a boy”.
A person's value orientations are formed in the family, manifested in social and interethnic relations, as well as determining his lifestyle, spheres and level of claims, life aspirations, plans and ways to achieve them.
In our country, 25% of families are not able to positively socialize children, and up to 15% form offenders.
educational function. This is both the direct upbringing of parents, and the influence of the entire atmosphere and microclimate of the family on the formation of the child's personality. The personal example of the parents. The child copies the behavior of adults, imitates their actions.
Social status - providing a family member with a certain social position in society;
Recreational and psychotherapeutic function. A person should feel absolutely protected, be absolutely accepted, despite his status, appearance, life success, financial situation. To do this, the family must have a friendly atmosphere. Each family member must have his own personal territory - not necessarily a room, but at least a corner, a place that other family members recognize, otherwise the relationship becomes conflict. The importance of joint activities. Family traditions and holidays.
In fact, the family appeared on Earth long before the emergence of man, the human race. The nascent man simply used the form of cohabitation that arose in the animal world for his own self-preservation, survival. Already the biological feature of human reproduction (a longer period of formation of a human child compared to a baby animal before it acquires skills, abilities, the ability to independently provide itself with everything necessary for life) has necessitated such an organization of life, such a form of community, when a helpless child, together with his mother could find reliable protection from a kind, "big family".
Subsequently, as human society developed, new functions of the family gradually arose, were isolated, and developed, connected with the material and spiritual, social processes taking place in society. At each historical stage, this or that function of the family acquired a different significance - more or less. At the same time, they were all constantly interconnected and interdependent, often helping each other, and sometimes, however, hindering each other. And even today it is rather difficult to strictly distinguish and delimit one family function from another. For example, the performance of material functions is, under certain conditions, necessary for the family to perform spiritual functions (education, raising children), but the implementation of spiritual functions is an indispensable condition for the implementation of material and production functions.
The material activity of the family at different stages of its development was expressed through such functions as the organization of the direct production process, the accumulation of private property, the organization of consumption, as well as the exchange of its products of its activity with other human communities. At the same time, the economic, material-production, household function of the family at different stages of the development of society (in primitive communal, slave-owning and feudal societies) to a large extent also acted as a means of social, professional, moral, and then political and legal education of the younger generation. Productive labor at that time did not yet go beyond the family, it took place in front of children, and from a certain, rather early age, with their feasible direct participation. Therefore, the very labor activity of parents sharply increased parental authority in the eyes of children, which is why every word, gesture of father and mother was incomparably more pedagogically saturated, effective than in subsequent times, especially in modern times.
In the families of peasants and artisans, as well as some other social groups, this phenomenon persisted even after the liquidation of feudal relations. But on the whole, with the transition to capitalism, with the emergence of large factories and plants, productive labor has already largely spun off, separated from the family. Actually, even management activities, the process of managing their factories and factories, the capitalists gradually more and more entrusted specially trained managers, managers, who came not only from other families, but also from other social groups and classes. The predominant value of the XVII-XIX centuries. in the bourgeois family received the function of accumulating material wealth and transferring them by inheritance.
I must say that carried out in the late twenties - early thirties of the XX century. Complete collectivization in our country, even in rural areas, has separated the main part of labor activity from the life of the family, contributing to its transformation to a large extent only into a consumer unit. It is only in recent years that the development of individual labor activity, family contracting, and rental relations, which has begun, is gradually returning productive labor to the family. It is hoped that such shifts will not only increase the production of food and other basic necessities, but also the earlier involvement of the younger generation in labor activity. And, accordingly, to increase the effectiveness of the labor education of young people. Nevertheless, the general trend in the development of the economic function of the family remains: its share decreases with the development of society. From the main production unit in previous eras, the family turns, at best, into only an auxiliary one. And labor activity in the family, it must be assumed, will mainly develop at the level of hobby, contributing to the development and realization of the individuality of one or another type of personality. In other words, apparently, from labor-production in the family, only labor-art will remain in the future.
True, this "art" may eventually turn out to be no less productive than the current most productive (and most exhausting in conditions of a low level of mechanization) family contract work. The fact is that computer training from an early age, the spread of personal computers, the appearance of televisions with a stereoscopic, and perhaps even a holographic image, with the expansion of the possibilities of teleprojection onto the screen of drawings, texts, diagrams, drawings from electronic information banks, technical modeling, design , invention can largely migrate from design offices and research institutes directly into the family. And then it will be essentially a dialectical "return to the old", to the transformation of the family into the main production and labor unit of society, but on a new basis, in a new form and with a new content.
The second part of the productive activity of the family belongs to the production of the rising generation.
K. Marx emphasized that the production of people and the production of things are two necessary aspects of the production process. Thus, the next function of the family, which has also been inherent in it since ancient times, is the reproductive function, that is, the function of procreation, the reproduction of the population. First of all, naturally, its biological production. Actually, even the birth of a child out of wedlock by a woman already creates a family - albeit an incomplete one (unless, of course, she surrenders her child to a children's receiver). True, with regard to the biological production of children in recent decades, the family is gradually losing ground, and now it is no longer the only "nursery" of this kind. In principle, this production, apparently, may well do without a family. Many thinkers in ancient times most seriously argued that in conditions of uncertainty (and now, by the way, existing) it is better not to produce children in one's own family, but to choose children in children's homes. Because, they say, only in this case you get exactly what you want: a boy or a girl, blond or brunette, calm and quiet or cheerful and cheerful.
However, the reproduction of the population has not only a biological, but also a social moment, that is, not only the birth, but also its upbringing and training. It has now been quite reliably established that in this respect the family cannot be adequately replaced by any public institutions. It is in the warm, favorable atmosphere of the family that the child naturally and most effectively receives the first socialization of his personality, acquires the foundations of his own personality.
Of course, nowadays it is rare that a family can give its child the kind of training that society and social institutions can give him. And therefore, already from the age of six or seven, our child goes to school, then to a college or technical school, a higher educational institution, etc. But, as a rule, the moral and psychological potential that is laid down by the child by the family remains for many years and plays a significant role in further professional growth and the formation of other social facets of the individual. It is in the family that the child first encounters social relations of power - thanks to parental activities in the distribution of benefits, rewards and punishments, prohibitions and permissions. In the family, he also meets with relations of authority - both official (parental) and functional (based on the higher competence of parents or older brothers and sisters, their more developed skills and abilities, the success of their activities).
But since the reproductive, as well as material and production, economic activity of the family is most closely connected with the life of society, they are largely in contact. Already in ancient Rome, during the time of Emperor Augustus, the first laws appeared aimed at stimulating the birth rate in the family. They created, provided certain benefits for all Roman citizens with children, and at the same time, some material and social restrictions for the childless and bachelors.
The Soviet state paid much attention to this side of the family's activity from its very inception. However, in practical life, many officials still perceive the process of giving birth and raising children as a purely personal matter for everyone. And on the part of the state, in fact, for many decades there was the same attitude. If you look at the statute of state awards, for example, where the significance of each award is strictly ranked and which bar after which should be attached, then the social weight of the medal "Maternal Glory" or even the "Order of Motherhood" is significantly lower than the medals "For Labor Valor" or "Veteran of labour". It is hardly possible to call it a wise policy. After all, the theft of a mother from a child (albeit on a “legal” basis) in the first years of his life, in all honesty, gave very little to production, but took a lot from the child, and ultimately from society. So, in essence, it was just another self-deception of the command-bureaucratic system of the state, which was trying to outwit itself. Now the situation is gradually improving, because the negative consequences of such a short-sighted, short-sighted policy at the regional, and sometimes even at the state level, have become too clear.
The third function of the family is educational. It is closely related to reproductive when it comes to the social reproduction of the population. The family gives primary socialization to the individual, the child, teaches him to live among people. But these measures are not limited to its educational function. The family instills in the child the foundations of certain ideological and political views, worldviews, in the family he learns and masters moral norms, here he develops primary skills and patterns of behavior, polishes individual moral and psychological traits, features. Yes, and the foundation of physical health and development is laid in the family. This happens primarily due to the educational activities of the family, that is, the targeted impact on the child in order to instill in him certain predetermined qualities, taking into account the requirements of society. Education is carried out in the process of everyday communication of the child with family members, relatives, all people with whom the family maintains more or less permanent relations. Such primary socialization serves as a connecting link between the "small" world of the child, where he receives his first impressions of life, with the "big" world, into which he moves as he matures.
Yes, and during the period of the child's study at school, then at a secondary or higher educational institution, while working in production, the educational function of the family does not die off, the educational influence on the younger generation does not stop. And a person who grew up in a normal family, in his actions, as a rule, is guided not only by the opinion of everything. society or members of their work collective, but to a large extent by the opinion of their loved ones. This often helps him to protect himself from unseemly actions, reckless actions.
The next function of the family is recreational (that is, restorative). It is known that the formed personality realizes itself primarily in socially useful activity. Of course, every year a working person receives trade union leave, sometimes, if he is very lucky, he ends up in rest houses, sanatoriums, travels to resorts and other places of recreation, restoration of his strength. But everyday, the main recreational institution is still the family. Here we receive both physical, and material, and moral, and psychological help from each other, we relieve ourselves of the tension with which we are “charged” in society, in our personal, official, professional and civic functioning. Our social health primarily depends on the family. Even the level of effectiveness of the impact of state recreational institutions and places largely depends on the family in which a person lives, that is, on the recreational potential of the family. And a day of life in a family can be equal in its effectiveness to one person with weeks of stay in a rest home. And sometimes vice versa: in terms of its mental load, one day of stay in a family sometimes exceeds a week of a person’s workload.
The communicative function of the family is to satisfy the human need for two opposite phenomena - communication and solitude. Externally imposed, forced communication (on the street, in public transport, at work, etc.) most often not so much satisfies our communication needs as overloads them. In everyday life, an individual very often experiences discomfort from the need to communicate with people who are unsympathetic to him. Another thing is the home environment, where, as a rule, we communicate with people, firstly, socially and psychologically close, and secondly, where they treat our personality more delicately and respectfully. Here the need for the desired communication is satisfied, in communication with relatives, close people, that is, the need for intimate communication, mutual understanding and mutual support. It goes without saying that only a healthy family can perform such a function. The moral and psychological health of a person is in direct connection with the nature of intra-family communication, with the moral and psychological climate that has developed in this family.
Some sociologists also single out the regulatory function of the family. It includes a system of regulation of relations of each family member with each other, with other people, with the whole society. Actually, the regulatory function at the first stages of the formation and development of the child's personality is included in the educational function. But even in relation to an adult, the regulatory function of the family is preserved. Already the feeling of belonging to the family to a large extent corrects the behavior of adults at work, in communication with other people. A family man, as a rule, is more circumspect in his actions, perhaps even more conservative, in any case, less dynamic in negative manifestations. This is what makes him feel responsible for his family. And in our time in some republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia, for example, the word of parents, their authority plays a decisive role in choosing a spouse, deciding on marriage. The problem of choosing a profession or place of work also largely depends on the family.
Naturally, the form and tactics of this regulatory activity undergo ever greater changes over time. The general trend here is the same as in the whole society: the transition from an authoritarian, command-and-bureaucratic style of management to a liberal, democratic one, from the method of command to the method of persuasion, recommendation, advice, etc. A special role is played first by the official, then by the functional, and then the personal authority of family members: first of all, parents, as well as older brothers and sisters. Although the behavior of parents can be largely corrected by the opinions of children and their actions.
As society humanizes, the importance of the felicitological function of the family increases more and more. To some extent, it combines all other functions, but at the same time it is independent, and, in our opinion, should be distinguished not only scientifically, sociologically, but also individually and psychologically. In the sense that this function should be recognized and purposefully carried out in every family. "Felicite" translated from Latin into Russian means "happiness". Therefore, the felicitological function means creating conditions for the happiness of each family member. But only a friendly, prosperous, cultured, morally and psychologically sound family can perform this function.
