p Marx approached the analysis of society as a materialist and a dialectician. He saw that all phenomena of social life are combined into an integral system and that society is developing and undergoing qualitative changes. Marx singled out major historical periods in social evolution, characterised by a qualitatively fixed system of economic, socio-political and ideological relations, as well as by definite laws typical of a given period. He called them socio-economic formations, thus introducing the term and concept into sociology. Whereas the category “society” expresses the specific character of social life in comparison with nature, the category " socioeconomic formation" expresses the peculiarities of different stages of social development. The socio-economic formation, according to Marx and Engels, is "a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar, distinctive character".  [60•1 

p Marx elaborated his theory of socio-economic formations in Wage Labour and Capital, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Capital, etc. In "What the ’Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats" Lenin wrote that in Capita. Marx "showed the whole capitalist social formation to the reader as a living thing-with its everyday aspects, with the actual social manifestation of the class antagonism inherent in production relations, with the bourgeois political structure that protects the rule of the capitalist class, with the bourgeois ideas of liberty, equality and so forth, with the bourgeois family relationships".  [61•1 

p In the structure of each socio-economic formation there are main formative elements, above all, the basis and the superstructure of society.

p The basi. is the system of production relations.

p The superstructur. is the system of political, legal, philosophical, ethical, aesthetic and religious ideas, similar ideological relations, and the corresponding institutions. The superstructure comprises the state, political parties, the church, etc.

p Each society has its own specific basis and the corresponding superstructure.

p Relations between the basis and the superstruc- 62 ture are governed by laws. The basis determines the character of the superstructure. If the basis undergoes a change, so does the superstructure. However, while dependent on the basis, the superstructure also has its own influence on the latter. The role of ideas, the state, political parties and other superstructural phenomena in the life of society is enormous. For example, the bourgeois state has an important role to play in protecting capitalist property and defending existing relations. Revolutionary theories and the political parties guided by these theories accelerate historical progress.

p Recognition of the fact that the basis is primary with respect to the superstructure promotes the materialist resolution of the fundamental question of philosophy concerning society. It explains how the mode of production fundamentally determines all aspects of social life, and demonstrates how economic and all other relations in society are interconnected.

p The basis and the superstructure are the chief structural elements of the formation. They are specific in each formation and it is owing to them that stages of social evolution differ from one another.

p Many other phenomena, besides the aforementioned, are included in the socio-economic formation, e. g. certain historical communities of people (clan, tribe, nationality, nation), classes and 63 other social groups, the family, everyday life, etc. Although it would be a mistake to include them in the basis or superstructure, they do belong to the formation, and differ qualitatively from one formation to another. For example, in the primitive-communal formation people lived in clans and tribes. In class precapitalist formations nationalities exist. Under capitalism, nations are formed from nationalities. In developed socialist society (in the USSR), a new historical community-the Soviet people- has emerged.

A socio-economic formation is not a mechanical sum total of heterogeneous social phenomena that have come together by accident. Marxism treats the socio-economic formation as an integral organism, in which all phenomena are organically linked and interact directly or indirectly. The chief integrating element which binds them all into a single whole is the mode of production of material benefits.