p Now that we have studied the mode of production of material wealth, the economic basis and the superstructure of society, we can extend and deepen our ideas of the socioeconomic formation and realise that it is a complex social organism. The mode of production is the material and economic basis of a formation, its backbone, or shall we say, its 206 skeletal frame, while its economic and spiritual image is characterised by the superstructure. Consequently, production, basis and superstructure are the key links, the components of any socio-economic formation, but with distinctive features in each given formation.

p Besides production, basis and superstructure a socioeconomic formation is characterised by other social features: specific historical human communities (tribe, clan, nationality, nation), mode of life, family and marriage, language, natural sciences and certain public organisations (scientific and technical, and sports). Without being parts either of the basis or of the superstructure, these features are essential components of any formation, for without them society cannot exist and develop. Indeed, can people work and think without language which is a means of intercourse and exchange of views, or to reproduce the human race without family and marriage? Of course they cannot.

p As a rule, all these features are typical of all formations and are subject to profound change in the course of transition from one formation to another. The forms of human communities change: in the primitive society the typical human communities were clans and tribes, under feudalism there were nationalities, and under capitalism—nations. With the transition from capitalism to socialism bourgeois nations are replaced by socialist nations. The mode of life, family and marriage, etc., change with each successive formation. As regards language, it changes in the process of social development and can pass from one formation to another. This also applies to achievements in natural science which are also assimilated and used in everyday life and in the process of labour by people in different formations.

p The social phenomena comprising a socio-economic formation are organically connected and influence each other either directly or indirectly so that a formation is a complex, developing social organism.

p We have already spoken about the unity and direct interaction of the productive forces and production relations, the basis and the superstructure. The superstructure is also connected with the productive forces, though not directly but through the economic basis. Elements of the superstructure also interact: politics, for example, influences art, morality, philosophy and other forms of the 207 spiritual life of the people. Production, basis and superstructure leave their imprint on family relations, on the mode of life, etc. In a word, a socio-economic formation is wickerwork of the most diverse .social phenomena whose interaction is occasioned above all by material production which permeates all the different social phenomena, determines the role and importance of each one of them, and dominates and transforms them in conformity with its own nature.

p By showing the inviolable unity of social phenomena and their material basis, the concept of socio-economic formation completely overturns idealistic and metaphysical social theories which were predominant in pre-Marxist philosophy. The concept of formation also puts an end to the non-historical, abstract views of social life and shows that there is no such thing as society in general, but only a concrete historical society, i. e., a society which, to quote Marx, stands “at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar distinctive character”.  [207•*  Every society has its own, intrinsic productive forces, a certain type of production relations, a specific spiritual life, etc. In conformity with the general laws of history, every society also has its own, specific laws. The intrinsic laws of the communist formation, for example, are the law of planned, proportionate development of the national economy, the law of satisfying the growing requirements of people, the law of uninterrupted crisis-free development of the productive forces, etc.

p Thus, the concept of socio-economic formation makes it possible to sort out all the historical formations and events. And although none of them are exact replicas of others, the concept of socio-economic formation enables us to single out what is most essential, common and recurrent, i. e., to disclose the laws of social development. This means that history is not a haphazard, chaotic conglomeration of phenomena, but a law-governed natural historic process of replacement of one socio-economic formation by another, higher and better one. At the same time the objective basis of what is common and recurrent—a historically definite 208 type of production relations corresponding to a no less definite nature of production relations—is brought to light. “...Only the reduction of social relations to production relations and of the latter to the level of the productive forces, provided a firm basis for the conception that the development of formations of society is a process of natural history.”  [208•* 

p The elaboration of the teaching about socio-economic formations has made it possible to periodise history on a strictly scientific basis. The primitive-communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist and communist formations are the most important stages, or periods of history, whose succession was law-governed and a natural historical necessity. Neither does history stand still within the framework of each socio-economic formation. Historical development is not only a series of qualitative changes, of gigantic leaps from formation to formation; it also moves from a lower to a higher phase within one and the same formation. Capitalism goes through two stages of development—pre-monopoly and monopoly, or imperialist. The communist formation also develops from the lower stage—socialism, to the higher—mature communism.

p History also shows that not all nations necessarily pass through all the formations without exception in their development. Slav and German tribes moved from the tribal system directly to feudalism, bypassing the slave-owning system. Some peoples (in the Central Asian republics of the USSR, and in the Mongolian People’s Republic) attained socialism bypassing not only capitalism, but also partially the stage of mature feudalism. But this does not refute the general objective tendency of mankind’s development from one formation to another, nor does it violate the unity of the entire historical process.

p The fact that the concept of socio-economic formation discloses that which is common and recurrent in the development of peoples in various countries and continents does not mean that peoples in one and the same formation have no specific features of their own. These features, for example, manifest themselves in the uneven rates and varying 209 levels of their development. This is due to the fact that in different countries elements of one or another formation do not mature at one and the same time, to specific internal and external factors, but chiefly to the nature and the essence of the formation itself. For instance, in capitalist society, particularly when it is in the imperialist stage, the law of the uneven economic and political development of different countries comes into operation. The transition to socialise is accompanied by the gradual approximation of levels ’of economic development, and when communism triumphs on Earth there will no longer be differences in the rates and levels of development.

p Thus, a socio-economic formation, from the point of view of the countries concerned, presents a very complex and varied picture. Moreover, history knows no absolutely “pure” formations. In every formation there are survivals of the past in various spheres of social activity, and also the embryos or requisites of the new formation. Large-scale capitalist production, for example, is the material prerequisite of socialism, and the working class which arose on the basis of this production is the social force whose mission is to establish socialism.

It follows that the development of society is a lawgoverned, natural historical process of humanity’s movement from formation to formation. Moreover, being a tendency this movement forces its way through a mass of concrete and very diverse historical factors. Let us now investigate humanity’s advance from formation to formation in greater detail.