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p The idea of social progress was put forward by bourgeois ideologists at the dawn of capitalism, when the capitalist mode of production that arose in the heart of feudalism was ready to replace the historically obsolete economic form based on the individual employment of small-scale means of labour and on the system of serfdom.

p Ideologists of the young bourgeoisie, while opposing the theological substantiation of the divine origin and the invariability of the social and state system, argued that feudalism was historically transitory in nature and that it would inevitably be supplanted by a new and more advanced system. At that time the bourgeoisie believed that there was unlimited scope for improving human society on the basis of science and reason.

The views of Johann Herder (1744-1803), an ideologist of the German Enlighteners, are an example of how such theories were substantiated. According to him, history represents an unbroken chain of developments where each link is connected with those before and after it. Each link is a consequence of previous development and of necessity passes to a new and more progressive stage.

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p While advancing a correct idea concerning society’s transition from lower to higher stages, Herder failed to give it a scientific substantiation, for he himself held idealistic views of society’s life. He held that it was the level of cultural development, incorporating science, art, religion, the state, etc., as its main components, that played the determining role in social development.

p French bourgeois ideologists, such as Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) and Jean Condorset (1743-1794) also developed a theory of social progress. Turgot said, among other things, that mankind was marching on towards ever greater perfection. Both he and his follower Condorset associated this perfection, however, with unlimited development of the human intellect, science and art, i.e. they were, in fact, idealists.

p Hegel also recognised historical progress, viewing it as a consequence of developing the knowledge of freedom.

p While they subscribed to the idea of social progress at a time when the capitalist mode of production was fighting to assert itself and when the bourgeoisie was engaged in a struggle for power, bourgeois sociologists began to depart from this idea as soon as the capitalist mode of production became dominant in society. Then it became necessary for the bourgeoisie to substantiate the eternal nature of the capitalist social system, the capitalist state and the capitalist way of life. In response to this necessity theories emerged which made bourgeois society the limit of 501 progress, proclaiming capitalism the highest form of social development. Among such views were the theories of the French bourgeois sociologist and philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and those of the British sociologist and philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903).

p At the time when capitalist society was entering the imperialist stage and the contradictions of capitalism were manifesting themselves more and more acutely, concepts emerged rejecting historical progress and propagating the idea of regressive motion and repetition in society’s life.

p It was, in particular, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who advanced these views. He held that the motion of society and the surrounding world is not progressive or in a forward direction, but an eternal recurrence of the forms and stages of development that had already been passed.

p Modern bourgeois ideologists who argue the absence of progress in society’s life, include, for instance, the contemporary French philosopher Emile Brehier. His line of reasoning is that there are no phases in society’s development forming stages of progress. There are only different and quite independent social structures that are not connected into a single chain of progression from the lower to the higher. Each of these stages arises, exists and perishes in complete isolation.

p These views, however, definitely conflict with reality. The history of human society is evidence that social structures do not appear out of 502 nowhere, but arise on the basis of a previous structure due to certain specific changes in the latter.

p Social structures do not disappear without a trace after becoming historically obsolete. They develop into new and more advanced social structures. In other words, between the past social structure and the existing one there is a historical (genetic) link which conditions the uninterrupted development of human society.

p The well-known US psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike uses other arguments to prove the absence of progress in society. He claims that each historical epoch has specific features of its own and that the standards of one epoch are quite different from those of another. If this is so, he continues, how can it be decided which epoch is better and more progressive? In order to compare them one needs a specific criterion, but no such criterion exists. By changing one social state or another, Thorndike reasons, people intend to obtain something better, but, as a rule, this does not happen, for an improvement in one thing is inevitably accompanied by a deterioration in another. We have aviation but we do not have a Shakespeare. The iconoclasts who used to destroy statues, break stained-glass windows and smear religious paintings, set out to deprive the church of idolatry and cared least of all about the irreparable damage they inflicted on art, archaeology and history. Those who advocated laws forbidding the exploitation of child labour had no idea that these laws would encourage idleness and become a cause of juvenile delinquency. “...The more we study the 503 past, the more we find that it was right, not wrong...,” writes Thorndike  [503•1  and concludes that no attempts should be made to change the existing reality since it is fair and correct in itself. If we still are uncertain, our hesitations will disappear with time. If capitalist production relations seem abnormal to some people, and if they do not like private property, exploitation, unemployment and crises, they should not, according to Thorndike, wish to eradicate these phenomena, for the result is bound to be something even worse. They would then realise that everything (private property, exploitation, etc.) is not so bad after all, and even fair.

p The link between Thorndike’s views and the class interests of the bourgeoisie, as well as their reactionary essence, are as evident as is their anti-scientific nature and irrelevance to the true situation.

p Capitalist relations, private ownership of the means of production, exploitation, unemployment, crises and the bourgeoisie itself as a class, together with its sociologists, have all been eradicated in socialist society and no one, save for the bourgeoisie, is sorry that this has happened.

p During the revolutionary destruction of the old and obsolete, there were, of course, cases when something was destroyed by mistake (some works of art, architectural and historical monuments, etc.). These instances are not, however, the main and determining features typifying the nature 504 and significance of these changes. They are definitely outweighed by the huge torrent of positive change bringing about a new and more progressive social system and a more advanced way of life.

p It was Marx and Engels who, for the first time, scientifically substantiated social progress on the basis of the dialectico-materialist interpretation of history.

p According to Marx and Engels, history represents a consecutive supplanting of separate generations, each of which utilises the productive forces inherited from the previous generations. In view of this, the new generation both continues the inherent activity under the totally different conditions and changes it in accordance with the new conditions.  [504•1  For this reason, there is a linkage in human history consisting in the movement from one stage of social development to another, from one social system to a more advanced one. All the social systems that replace one another in the course of history represent, according to Marx and Engels, mere stages in the infinite development of human society from the lower to the higher. “Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its womb, it loses its validity and justification. It must give way to a 505 higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish.”  [505•1 

Thus, society does not mark time, nor does it repeat the forms already passed, but is constantly on the move and changing from the lower to the higher, from the worse to the better. It is with this forward movement based on the development of the productive forces that historical materialism associates the essence of social progress.