p The study of the productive forces in conjunction with production relations allowed Marx to notice the recurrent features in the life of different countries and nations, single out the basic stages of society’s progress and work out, on this basis, the notion of a socio-economic system. Stressing the determining role of the level of development of the productive forces and, in particular, of the means of labour, for separating the stages of social progress, Marx wrote: “ Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments 509 of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on.”  [509•1 

p Pointing to the means of labour as a factor behind the level of society’s development and distinguishing the stages of this development, Marx assigns the main role to the way people combine with the means of labour, i.e. to production relations. It is the nature of production relations and the specific way in which people are connected with the means of labour or, to put it more precisely, with the means of production that, in Marx’s words, “distinguishes the different economic epochs...".  [509•2 

p Taking the level of development of the productive forces and of the corresponding production relations as the criterion for social progress. Marx distinguished five socio-economic systems: the primitive-communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist.

p Each of these systems represents a society at a definite stage of historical development, which is characterised by a definite level of the productive forces and the corresponding production relations, by the resultant system of diverse ideas and institutions, and by a definite type of family and other relations.

p The primitive-communal (or tribal) system represents the initial stage in the existence of human 510 society. It is characterised by poorly developed productive forces. The means of labour utilised at that time did not allow man to fight the forces of nature on his own or to procure the essential means of subsistence. All this necessitated collective labour, which laid the foundations for communal ownership of the means of production, equal distribution and relations of co-operation and mutual assistance among people. There was no state, no classes, no law. Social functions were performed by people elected by all the members of the community, who entirely relied on their authority, trust and respect in performing their activities. Social intercourse was based entirely on moral norms and customs.

p With the emergence of improved instruments of production, the possibility arose of working alone or in families. This eradicated the need for collective labour and a communal economy. People began switching over to privately-managed economies which, under those historical conditions, were more productive. Private property appeared on the basis of individual labour. With the institution of private property, the development of the productive forces resulted in differences in the property status of society’s members and then among the antagonistic classes-the slaves and the slave-owners. The inception of classes and the class struggle was followed by the rise of the state, together with politics and law.

p In this way society passed to a new and higher stage in its development, which became known as the slave-owning socio-economic system.

p The possibility of obtaining more material wealth than was required to sustain the direct producer’s existence, was a specific feature of the productive forces under this system. Its production relations were based on the slave-owner’s complete ownership of the means of production and of the labourer, who was treated as a “talking instrument of labour”. Society’s affairs were managed by the state, used by the slave-owners to suppress the slaves.

p The next stage in society’s development was feudalism. Feudal production relations were based on the feudal lord’s ownership of the land and on his partial ownership of the serf, whom he no longer had the right to kill, but could still sell, punish or force to work for his own benefit. In feudal society, apart from the feudal lord’s property, the serfs had means of labour of their own, and there was also a personal economic sector, based on personal labour. The peasant received from the landlord a plot of land, on which he organised his individual household and created the necessary means of subsistence for himself and his family. The peasant returned a part of the means of subsistence created by him, either in cash or in kind, to the feudal lord, or had to work the feudal lord’s land with his means of labour.

p The feudal social system was more progressive than the previous, slave society. Under feudalism the direct producer had a certain interest in increasing the productivity of his labour.

p Yet the feudal mode of production became 512 historically obsolete with the further development of the productive forces and with the spread of commodity-money relations and division of labour. It was replaced by the capitalist socio-economic system, based on capitalist private ownership of the means of production and hired labour. Among the specific features of capitalism are the socialisation of labour and machine production, which sharply enhanced the productive forces of society, and the concentration of wealth and poverty at society’s opposite poles. Under capitalism the worker is formally free, but he is virtually dependent in economic terms, for he is deprived of the means of subsistence and is compelled to sell his labourpower to the capitalist who appropriates the surplus value, created by the worker, in the form of profit.

p Though the capitalist mode of production was progressive at a definite stage in the development of human society, it later became a brake on social progress due to the intensification of the builtin contradiction between the productive forces and production relations. This was revealed, in particular, in the conflict between the social nature of production and the private form of appropriation. During the socialist revolution effected by the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry and other sections of the working people, capitalism is supplanted by the new, socialist mode of production, which represents the economic basis of the new, communist socio-economic system.

p The communist socio-economic system is marked by an unprecedentedly high level of 513 development of the productive forces, capable of ensuring the production of the abundant material wealth required to meet all society’s demands. Here, production relations are associated with the domination of the single communist ownership of the means of production, the absence of classes and class distinctions and the operation of the principle from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The state will wither away and be replaced by communist self- administration. Law will disappear together with the state. Social intercourse will be regulated by moral norms, resting on the force of public opinion.

p Such are some of the features of the basic stages in society’s historical progress, which assume the form of five socio-economic systems through which mankind passes.

p Marx viewed society’s transition from one system to another as an intrinsic law of human history in general. Humanity consecutively passes through all of them. Each of them is essential at a definite stage in society’s progress and acts as a spring-board for the emergence of a new and higher one. “No social order,” Marx wrote, “ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the society itself.”  [513•1 

p Bourgeois sociologists advance concepts in an 514 attempt to refute the Marxist theory of socio- economic systems, which associates society’s transition from one stage of development to another higher one with the replacement of production relations, representing the outcome of the development of the productive forces. They disregard the link between society’s development and the change in production relations. Among them is the theory of “stages of economic growth" advocated by the US sociologist Walter Rostow.

p Rostow takes the degree of utilisation of scientific and technical achievements in production, as well as the level of consumption, as criteria of social progress. Proceeding from these criteria, he divides the history of human society into five consecutive stages: (1) the pre-Newtonian stage of science and technology,- (2) the transformative stage of traditional society and the creation of conditions for utilising the achievements of modern science; (3) the sharp upswing in the level of technical development; (4) the movement- towardsmaturity period, when society begins to effectively utilise modern scientific and technological achievements; (5) the high mass consumption period, when the main industries switch over to manufacturing consumer goods.

p Rostow’s concept is characterised by an artificial manner of phasing human history into the above stages of development and by the absence of clearcut definitions of each stage. Not by chance does Rostow disregard production relations which alone can express the essence of any stage in the development of the social organism. Such an 515 approach allows him to escape analysis of the class structure of society, of the forms of ownership that supplant one another in history and the corresponding forms of exploitation and, what is more, to present the evolution of antagonistic society as a process by which science is increasingly subordinated to production.

This theory undoubtedly serves the interests of the bourgeoisie, since it distracts the working people’s attention from the class contradictions inherent in capitalist society and proves the possibility of improving the position of the masses within capitalist production relations on the basis of technical progress alone.