We present to your attention a chapter from the new monograph "The Highest Values of the Russian State" "The Social System as a Living Organism".
Vital approach in the methodology of scientific knowledge
To this day in science there is a stable tradition of disciplinary differentiation into the natural sciences and the humanities. The majority of humanities categorically oppose the application of the methodologies of the natural sciences in their field. In turn, natural scientists tend to generally deny the humanities the right to be considered a science. Meanwhile, the scientific methodology for the process of human cognition is one. The difference in the methods and techniques of the applied research tools does not refute the universality of the principles of the organization of science.
G. Rickert’s famous argument that, in contrast to the method of “generalization” (knowledge of phenomena based on their recurrence), which is characteristic of the natural sciences, humanities (in particular, history) operates with an ideographic method (phenomenological individualization), is easily refuted by numerous examples. The same historical science can present a wide range of studies based on the identification of cyclic patterns and trends. Each event is undoubtedly unique in its exclusivity. However, revealing the essence of each of them, separating particulars in the series of events, as a rule, one can discover certain patterns. At the same time, in the natural sciences, there are facts of phenomenological specificity, measurement errors, incomplete descriptions, and one-time phenomena. Starting with the rarest cosmogonic phenomena and ending with one-time experiments such as the explosion of a 50-megaton bomb.
As a rule, the first phenomenon, fixed as a revelation of new knowledge, in natural science has a one-time character. In this sense, natural science is as generalized as it is objectively individualized. The task facing both the humanities and the naturalists is a common one and consists in separating the accidental from the essential, in the transition from excess to system.
In view of the unity of scientific methodology, it is necessary to rethink the approaches to the main object of humanitarian and social research - society. Consistent distancing from the journalistic, artistic intentions, existential insights and religious revelations involved in the humanities leads science to an understanding of society as a special living organism. The vital approach proposed by the authors makes it possible to bring the humanities closer to the canons of strict scientific character, to achieve a methodological synthesis (synergy) of natural and humanitarian disciplines. “And if,” predicted L.N. Gumilyov, - a historian or ethnographer will take this path, he will receive the same brilliant prospects that biologists, geologists and geographers already have.
Vital foundations of the national idea
The traditions of applying the vital, or as it was also called in previous works, organismic, approach to social phenomena were historically formed within the framework of civilizational and ethnological discourses. The functioning of local historical cultures was likened to the vital activity of living beings by O. Spengler and A.D. Toynbee, N.Ya. Danilevsky and P.A. Sorokin. Cultural and historical communities, according to N.Ya. Danilevsky, develop exclusively in the plane of species biosocial existence. The special historical mission of the peoples was associated with the degree of their "life force". However, the provision on the biosocial organismic nature of civilizations has not received practical development in the further civilizational discourse. The assimilation of civilizations to living systems was akin to a metaphor, a beautiful allegory, which, of course, is not an attribute of a scientific approach. Meanwhile, we are talking about a new understanding of the forms of living nature.
A more rigid explanatory connection of social phenomena with the vital principles of existence has been developed in a number of areas of analysis of the nature of an ethnos. For the Russian scientific community, this approach was presented in the most systematic form in the works of L.N. Gumilyov. However, ethnological discourse was limited, as a rule, to the application of the organismic theory to only two components of statehood: population and territory, leaving the third component, the sphere of power management, out of the field of consideration. In view of this, the managerial potential of the findings was not obvious. In the approach proposed by the authors, the vital principles also apply to the state in its narrowly functional sense. The exclusion from the topology of the organism of statehood of any of the three manifestations of statehood is a fatal deformation of its specific anatomy.
The proposed approach is based on the assumption that civilizations are stable in their identity and this stability is determined by their vital nature.
Civilizations in the author's understanding are not only a fixation of the cultural differences of peoples (this is essential, but secondary, instrumental), but also the fundamental features of the life of a community of people developed over millennia, including such as value behavioral motivators, which form the basis of identity, differences of civilizations.
In this sense, one can speak of peculiar social civilizational-value genetic codes, similar in essence to the biological codes of living organisms, but "programming" and controlling not only the biological, but also the social, socialized behavior of a person and his communities. And if it is reliably known that in the biological case, genetic mutations lead to deformities and death of the organism, then in exactly the same way, attempts to invade the social civilization-value genetic code lead to no less dangerous consequences. As in biological nature, analogs of the principles of heredity (this is cultural fixation, traditions), non-crossing, and areal living conditions operate in the civilizational field, although, of course, they are significantly complicated, partially modified.
What are the features of civilizations in relation to their own kind? Socio-genetic differences include such causal circumstances or factor components as ethnicity, confessionalism, citizenship, language, culture, traditions, foundations, ways of life, territory, common historical destiny, collective memory, climate, etc. They affect and manifest themselves in the reflex and socio-behavioral culture, psychology, mentality, socio-economic models of the state (degree of autocracy, etatism, etc.).
Each organ of a single organism is vital for its functioning. Civilizations are like ecosystems, the artificial invasion of which irreversibly leads to their destruction.
Every organism can and must develop. In this sense, the conservation of civilizations has disastrous consequences for them. However, if development is replaced by mutagenesis, it can be literally deadly (the Russian example vividly speaks of this).
The national idea, as a value concentrator, in this approach is considered not traditionally - in the form of some speculative construction, but as a vital function of a complex social organism. In this sense, its definition is not a matter of subjective choice, but a strict diagnosis of the species specificity of the nation-state under study. By analogy with living systems, the invasion of the social civilizational-value genetic code of the state, which is expressed, in particular, in the implementation of other-system ideologemes, leads, as with genetic mutations in the biological world, to deformities and death of the organism.
Ontogeny and sociogenesis
The idea of the similarity of the laws of development of human communities to the laws of the life of man as a biological species was expressed by many thinkers in the past. Oswald Spengler likened the process of ontogenesis to the phases of development of the local cultural-historical types identified by him. Each of them, according to the German philosopher, goes through the stages of birth, childhood and youth growing up, maturity, aging and death. In this sense, he actually proclaimed the "decline of Europe." Another thing is that life expectancy (O. Spengler did not take this into account) can be artificially increased. The quality of medical care for an individual person is identical to the quality of public administration for society as a whole.
Spengler's brilliant guesses had a heuristic character. They were formulated as associations, not being confirmed by real phenomenological series, correlation of known biological and social rhythms. In the present study, an attempt is made to verify the available information of this kind.
The triad of basic potentials of existence
The triadic approach to determining the fundamental foundations of a country's existence - through territory, population, state administration - can, with some reservations, be applied as a universal characteristic of living systems.
An analogue of the territory of the country in the animal world is the habitat. It can expand with a high power potential of the corresponding species population and narrow when it is in a diseased state. However, the extent of distribution is set by the natural boundaries of the range, beyond which the active biological existence of the species is impossible. So is the territory of the country. There are natural limits to territorial expansion. At the same time, the narrowing of the territory can reach the point of its complete disappearance, which means the death of the corresponding state. The placement of an animal outside the specified biological range can turn into death for him. The first symptom of areal incompatibility is the cessation of reproduction. It is well known, for example, that animals in captivity do not breed. And a person, how does he react to moving into an alien environment? Human ability to adapt is certainly much higher.
However, a feeling of psychological discomfort (conscious or unconscious), expressed in various social or mental deviations when changing the territory of residence, is also found in a person. The birth rate abroad is sharply declining, to the point of a slow re-adaptation. Although sometimes it is not achieved.
In this sense, the concept of "homeland" contains not only moral, but also organismic-existential meaning. The sense of nostalgia also has vital grounds.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that foreigners are especially active in almost all revolutions. The feeling of environmental discomfort is actively converted in a person into a revolutionary protest, a non-reflexive desire for the restructuring of reality. To confirm this psychological reconstruction, it suffices to cite data on the ethnic composition of the parties. In party organizations (especially in the leadership) of a conservative-protective orientation, the share of national minorities is consistently lower than in parties of a revolutionary reformist orientation.
For example, it is advisable to take the statistics of the national composition of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries, as an organization not just an opposition organization, but practicing radical terrorist methods of fighting the regime. A clear disproportion is found between the participation of representatives of the national minority in party activities and their proportion in the population of the Russian Empire. Characteristically, the disproportion sharply increases with the transition to an analysis of the composition of extremist-oriented structures, such as the Socialist-Revolutionary Fighting Organization. “Approximately the same,” notes M.I., a prominent researcher of the Socialist-Revolutionary movement. Leonov, - there was a position in the "top" of the RSDLP.
The Jews also played a large role in the leadership of the Kadet Party, a much smaller one in the Unions of October 17 and the Russian people. This, of course, is not about the "Jewish conspiracy", but about explaining the objective psychological motives for the participation of Jews in the revolution (Fig. 1.2.1).
The territory, as a vital condition for the existence of society, according to the vital approach, objectively gravitates toward sacralization. Its most concentrated value expression is the concept of "Motherland". Love for her is not a manifestation of sentimentality or bureaucratic pseudo-patriotism, but of a truly instinctive (but not in a biological, but in a socially vital sense) guardianship. The erosion of patriotic sentiments, on the contrary, objectively leads to a weakening of the living system.
The second component of the formation of living systems is the biological population itself, the totality of individuals. In the case of a human community, this is "population". The behavior of an animal population is determined by the biological program of the species. In contrast, the existence of the human community is two-fold. Along with the biological, it contains a social component, which makes it possible to characterize the population as a socialized quasi-biological phenomenon.
The concept of "people" is more associated with the social dimension, "population" - with the biological, while "population" expresses their synthesized indivisible unity.
Approximately the same is said by V.I. Vernadsky the doctrine of the biochemical energy of living matter. The introduction of the concept of the noospheric standard of living is associated with the desire to create a methodological approach to the interpretation and cognition of the phenomenon of sociality. This level in the structuring of living systems is associated
with the very functioning of the population (of the human community). In accordance with the dual-basic biosocial nature of society, values at this level are functionally applied to the protection of two spheres of being: life in its biological species manifestation (for example, the value of demographic reproduction) and life support through a variety of social integrators (for example, the values of tradition).
Orientation towards life in a collectivist or individual manifestation is thus a choice of true values. Concepts aimed at undermining the foundations of life, such as, for example, birth control, are value-false in the vital paradigm.
The value of a population in wildlife is higher than the value of an individual. Accordingly, in the human community, when correcting this provision from the standpoint of social humanism, collectivist values should be logically (and not at all politically, as is usually understood) recognized as more factorial (i.e., value) significant in comparison with individual values. Human rights, in their modern absolutized sense, cannot be placed above the tradition of national solidarity if the task of maximizing the viability of the system remains.
The third level of organization of the human community - managerial - also has an analogue in wildlife. And in the animal world, some prototypes of management are found in the nature of the relationship between the leader and the pack, the collective behavior of the pack. Protosociality exists in the behavior of a number of "collective" animals, such as bees, ants, etc.
The ability to fully control a living system gives a person the presence of consciousness. The managerial potential of living systems can be either strengthened or weakened.
With the historical development, the control factor becomes more and more significant in the hierarchy of factors important for human existence. In view of the immanent connection of management with the presence of consciousness, unified management (public administration) as a social phenomenon is fixed as a value. Hence the enduring value significance of objectively strengthening the managerial potential of religious consciousness, national consciousness, historical consciousness, etc. On the contrary, ideas aimed at undermining the manageability of a living system should be qualified as anti-values in the vital approach. For example, the concept of unlimited deregulation of the economy, the transition from its manageability to a kind of market self-regulation, should be qualified as such. If we evaluate this liberalist ideologeme from the point of view of considering society as a living system, then its involutionary orientation seems obvious.
Historical failures of social eugenics
Attempts at genetic engineering in relation to the civilization-value genetic code can be just as dangerous and immoral as in some experiments in biological genetic engineering. Historically, attempts to develop a new "breed" of man ended, as you know, in failure. There is no reason to believe that they will be successful in the future.
A possible explanation for the origins of genetic engineering lies in the opposition of the civilizational principles of "gonia" and "urgy". The tradition of "gonia" - birth - implied the sacralization of nature and tribal (in the broadest sense - national) continuity. The urgency of the secular society was correlated with the archetype of a person - a transformer. The United States has become the most adequate historical embodiment of the principle of urgy. Gonic categories: “genus”, “nature”, “people”, “motherland” are not particularly valued in Urgi culture.
The one-dimensional material paradigm of the world in esotericism correlates with the development of a new breed of man - the golem. Golem nature is the material substratum. Unlike a man of divine creation, a golem has no spiritual component.
According to Jewish folklore legends, the golem was a clay giant animated by magical means. He acted as the ontological antipode of Adam. According to legend, Albert the Great managed to make a golem. But he was destroyed by Thomas Aquinas, who saw in his creation a challenge to God. It can be argued that the modern Western system of worldbuilding is golemic in its cultural and anthropological orientation. Under the slogan of the freedom of the individual, it is liberated from the highest spiritual standards. The spirit, as a component of human nature originally laid down by God, is increasingly atrophying in modern Western man. A global project of anthropological inversion is being implemented.
Historically, in the form of various ideological modifications, attempts have been repeatedly made to conceptually substantiate the expediency of civilizational "genetic engineering". Manifested such an idea as the creation of a "new type" of man. The list of the most famous concepts of social eugenics is as follows:
− social theocratic utopias of the ancient world and the Middle Ages (Legalism, Platonic “Beautiful City”, “City of the Sun”, etc.);
− the educational doctrine of "reasonable selfishness";
- Locke's concept - "a person is like a white sheet of paper";
− Smith's "economic man";
- the Soviet ideologeme of the new man (workers of the ideological front - as engineers of human souls);
− Nietzschean Superman;
− national socialist eugenics;
− Theosophical "fifth race";
− Maoist cultural revolution;
− society of "new nomads";
− posthuman theory.
In cases where it came to the practical implementation of eugenic concepts, this each time turned into bloody upheavals for humanity. The old “civilized man” who discovered high vitality was subjected to forcible reforging. When its hopelessness became clear, the idea of re-education was replaced by a trivial genocide. All socio-eugenic experiments implemented since ancient times ended in failure. The "new man" being constructed was rapidly leaving the stage.
The existing modern version of globalism can be characterized precisely as another modification of social genetic engineering. With regard to Russia, we are talking about the experiment of genetic engineering. Following the logic implemented since the 1990s. policy, the country will either turn into a civilizationally unviable mutant, or will be mortified.
In this regard, the recognition of one of the main theorists of Russian reforms, American D. Sachs, about the futility of using schemes universal for Western civilization in them is indicative: “We put the patient on the operating table, opened his chest, but he turned out to have a different anatomy.” In other words, the wrong surgical method resulted in the fact that the patient was almost stabbed to death. Russia cannot fit into the system of the New World Order due to its civilizational originality - "it has a different anatomy." Including another life-forming axiology.
In the recent past, some philosophers and sociologists compared society with a mechanism, the components of which were recognized as existing autonomously, independently of each other. Others likened society to a living organism, the functioning of which is ensured by the interconnection and interaction of its constituent structural elements. Modern philosophy and sociology consider society as a self-organizing, integral, stable, dynamic, functioning and developing system. Let's expand on this thesis in more detail.
Society is a self-organizing system. This statement must be understood in the sense that society arises and exists due to the action of causes inherent in driving itself. These reasons lie not in God, not in the world mind, or in something else that is outside of society, but in the interaction of elements of the social system itself, in particular, such as economics, politics, culture, law, morality, church, etc. d. In the process of functioning and development of society, the level of its organization increases.
Society is an integral system. Society, in other words, is a formation consisting of many different elements, each of which acts as an integral part of a single whole and which are interconnected in certain relationships and interactions. Society always has one or another structure that fixes the relationship between its components.
Society is a dynamic system. This means that it is not something fixed, once and for all given, unchanging. Being a relatively stable, stable system, it is at the same time in constant motion, changing its state over time. It is impossible to fix a single moment during which society would be in an absolutely unchanged position, in balance, at rest. It is constantly undergoing changes of one kind or another. These changes lead to the fact that society becomes an ever larger and more complex system. And the more complex the system is organized, the higher it is on the evolutionary ladder.
Society is a functioning system. This suggests that society is something active, working. Its components operate, such as people, social groups, political parties, the state and its structures, economy, culture, science, church, law, morality, etc. etc. The action of the constituent parts ensures the functioning of society itself. True, it must be borne in mind that the result of the sanctioning of society is by no means always what the subjects, people expect, what they count on, what they hope for.
Society, like any system, has a certain structure, which is formed by the elements of which this system consists, and the connections and relationships that exist between them. The structure of society is quite complex. It is hardly possible to identify all the elements of the social system, all the connections and relationships that exist between them, due to their extremely large variety. Without pretending to be, it is still possible to single out a number of subsystems in society, in the role of which are the spheres of public life of people. Usually there are four spheres of public life; economic, social, political and spiritual. Each of these areas has its own specifics, its own set of constituent elements, its own structure. Let us give them at least a brief description.
The basis, the basis of people's social life is formed by material production, the laws of its functioning and development, which constitute the economic sphere of society. The economic sphere includes everything that is connected with the activities of the boats in the production, exchange, distribution and consumption of material goods, the material conditions of their life. What are its parameters of the economic sphere, what constituent elements does it include?
The basis of the economic sphere is formed by labor, production activity, through which people create the material and spiritual benefits they need for existence, for life. The concept of "production" just reflects the fact that labor activity is productive in nature, that in the process of labor things, objects, products are created that can satisfy certain needs of people.
In society, in fact, at any stage of its development, there are not only individuals, but also their other associations (social groups, social communities), between which certain relations develop. The basis of the social sphere is formed by stable social groups of people, social communities, the patterns of their emergence, existence, functioning and development, the system of connections and relations between them, their social behavior.
In society, there are many groups and communities of different scale and social role. These are communities, tribes, nationalities, nations, classes, urban and rural populations, production teams, professional associations, gender and age groups, small social groups, etc. The need to manage the economic and social spheres, their structural elements has led to the fact that in society, at a certain stage of its development, political institutions, institutions and organizations appear, which formed the political sphere of people's public life. These institutions, institutions and organizations include the state, political parties, trade unions, youth, cultural, religious organizations, etc. Their activities and relations between them constitute the political life of society.
The most ancient and developed political institution is the state.
The social life of the Rooks is made even richer and more diverse by spiritual values, on the basis of which the spiritual life of society is formed.
The specificity of the spiritual sphere is manifested primarily in the fact that it is formed by the production and consumption of spiritual values, such as scientific ideas and theories, moral norms of behavior, artistic, aesthetic ideas and views, religious feelings, etc. The production of spiritual values is based on mental, intellectual labor, which opens up wide opportunities for human creativity, for its amateur performance. The specificity of the spiritual sphere lies in the peculiarities of the consumption of spiritual values. In the process of consumption, spiritual values do not "disappear", but turn into the wealth of the human spiritual world. The process of consumption of spiritual values, in addition, is simultaneously a process of production. After all, the viewer, listener, reader does not just passively perceive information from the outside, but he experiences, comprehends spiritual values from the point of view of his life experience.
The spiritual sphere in the public life of people has a very special role. The point is that the spiritual sphere, like no other, directly affects the life and development of a person, the formation of his needs and interests, the manifestation of his talents and abilities.
The material sphere of society's life content criteria and significance
Material culture is usually understood as artificially created objects that allow people to optimally adapt to the natural and social conditions of life.
Objects of material culture are created to meet a variety of human needs and therefore are considered as values. Speaking about the material culture of a particular people, they traditionally mean such specific items as clothing, weapons, utensils, food, jewelry, housing, and architectural structures. Modern science, exploring such artifacts, is able to reconstruct the lifestyle of even long-disappeared peoples, which are not mentioned in written sources.
With a broader understanding of material culture, three main elements are seen in it.
§ Actually the objective world created by man - buildings, roads, communications, appliances, objects of art and everyday life. The development of culture is manifested in the constant expansion and complication of the world of artifacts, the "domestication" of the human environment. It is difficult to imagine the life of a modern person without the most complex artificial devices - computers, television, mobile phones, etc., which underlie the modern information culture.
§ Technologies - means and technical algorithms for creating and using objects of the objective world. Technologies are material because they are embodied in concrete practical methods of activity.
§ Technical culture is specific skills, abilities, abilities of a person. Culture preserves these skills and abilities along with knowledge, transmitting both theoretical and practical experience from generation to generation. However, in contrast to knowledge, skills and abilities are formed in practical activities, usually by a real example. At each stage of the development of culture, along with the complication of technology, skills also become more complex.
1. Who introduced the term "Sociology" into scientific circulation:
A. O. Kont
3. Who is the author of the "Course of Positive Philosophy":
A. O. Kont
4. Which of the scientists considered society by analogy with a living biological organism:
A. G. Spencer
5. The historically developing integral system of relations and interactions between people, their communities and organizations is:
A. Society
6. Expression of the social essence of people's lives, the social specifics of their relationships and interactions
A. Sociality
7. The totality of connections and relations that social groups and communities of people enter into among themselves regarding the economic, social, political and spiritual conditions of their life activity are:
A. Social structure of society
8. Relatively stable populations of people who differ in more or less similar conditions and lifestyles, more or less similar interests are:
A. Social communities
9. Testing the selected instrument on a small sample size to check that the respondents understand the instructions and questions correctly, as well as to check that their answers correspond to the expected type of answers.
A. Pre-testing
10. The strategic document of the study is a thesis statement of the concept of the organizers of the work, their plans and intentions for this
A. Sociological Research Program
11. Man is:
A. generic concept, a set of physiological and psychological characteristics that characterize a person, unlike other living beings
12. A theory that considers personality as a product of historical development, the result of the inclusion of an individual in a social system through active objective activity and communication,
A. Marxist theory of personality
13. Science that studies the social aspects of the economy.
A. Economic sociology
14. The system of society responsible for the production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods and services necessary for the life of people
A. Economic area
15. A branch of sociology that studies social groups and individuals involved in the labor process, as well as their professional and social roles and statuses, conditions and forms of their labor activity.
A. Sociology of work
17. Synergy is
A. Organizational effect
18. A stable form of organization and regulation of public life, as a set of roles and statuses designed to meet certain social needs.
A. Social institution
19. The function of a specific body of the organization, which ensures the direction of the activities of all elements of the organization without exception, keeps within acceptable limits the deviation of individual parts and the organization as a whole from the set goals.
A. Management
20. For the first time, the characteristics of the organization's management were determined
A. G. Fayol
21. A specific way of organizing and developing human life activity, represented in the products of material and spiritual labor, in the system of social norms and institutions, in spiritual values, in the totality of people's relations to nature, to each other and to themselves, is
A. culture
22. Culture inherent in a certain social group or stratum of society
A. subculture
23. Actions, human activities, social phenomena that do not correspond to the norms established in a given society.
A. Deviation
24. Author of the work "Suicide"
A. E. Durkheim
25. An association of people based on consanguinity, marriage or guardianship, connected by common life and mutual responsibility
A. Family
26. The historically changing social form of relations between a woman and a man, through which society streamlines and sanctions their intimate life, establishes marital, parental and other related rights and obligations
A. Marriage
Society how the body has a set of developing, interacting organs, the destruction of which, each individually, leads to the complete decomposition of the whole organism.
The purpose of this article is to reveal our problems, the problems of society. Openly look at the development of relationships in everyday life.
At present, all people are in different living conditions: financial, social, etc. As a result, everyone is trying to outdo each other, striving to prove their advantage over the others, showing arrogance, emphasizing their status.
In our schools, the attitude of children towards teachers has become consumerist. Many children show no respect for the person who gives them knowledge. Sometimes, insulting and humiliating teachers, showing their character, they again demonstrate the status of their parents. But these are just children, our future!
And what will that future be like?
In public places, shopping centers, shops, we are again trying to show our position. We are trying to remind ourselves of our rights, behaving provocatively, “spitting” and proving the banal concept “The client is always right”.
And what will we get from this?
Nothing but satisfaction from the fact that a person has been humiliated and joy from victory in this asocial, competitive struggle. Another reason to show your arrogance. As a result, hatred towards each other is born and strengthened.
The words Abdullah bin Mas'ud(may Allah be pleased with him) it is reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said :
“He will not enter Paradise, in whose heart there is arrogance weighing a speck of dust!” Us Hearing this, one person asked: “But a man wants his clothes and shoes to be beautiful!” To which the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “Verily, Allah is beautiful, and He loves the beautiful, but arrogance is the rejection of the truth and a manifestation of contempt towards people.”
Holy Hadith Muslim, 91.
Unfortunately, in the minds of most representatives of society there is no desire to create, to create something that could be left behind. Society does not have goals that unite and unite people. Each individual survives on his own - as a result of which society, like an organism, decomposes.
The temper of a Muslim will never allow such actions to be committed, will never affect the decay of social relations - moreover, he will fight this filth by providing good examples on his part.
The desire for knowledge, both secular and spiritual. In the future, using the acquired knowledge in practice, in life conditions. The ability to set goals, strive for them, achieve them. All these qualities must be developed by a true Muslim.
Today, Muslims are a good example, in interaction with each other. Supporting each other in difficult situations, holding hands tightly. Rejoicing together for the gifts of Allah. Having common goals, standing shoulder to shoulder and looking in one direction, we try to do as many good deeds as possible, in the hope of the mercy of Allah Almighty.
And I really want to believe that not a single Muslim (Muslim woman), being an example of strong and healthy relations in an Islamic society, will never succumb to this problem and will do everything to “ organism"only grew and strengthened!!!
Ruslan Khairullin
In my opinion, it is necessary to start with the concept of "society". It is the most important not only for historical science, but for all social sciences in general. Turning to the analysis of the meaning of the word "society", we are immediately faced with the fact that it has not one, but many meanings. In other words, there is not one concept of society, but several different concepts, but expressed in one word, which greatly complicates the matter.
I will not dwell on the everyday, everyday meanings of this word, when they say about a person, for example, that he has fallen into a bad society or moves in a high society. I will only mention the use of the word “society” both in everyday life and in science to refer to certain public and other organizations: “Society of United Slavs”, “Southern Society”, “Philosophical Society”, “Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments” , "Society of Mutual Credit", societies of lovers of cats, dogs, joint-stock companies, etc.
Leaving all this aside, it turns out that in the philosophical, sociological and historical literature the term "society" is used in at least five, although related, but still different senses.
1.2.2. Two views on society: 1) as a simple set of people and 2) as a holistic entity (organism)
The first and, perhaps, the most important meaning for the historian and ethnologist of the term "society" is a separate, concrete society, which is a relatively independent unit of historical development. This meaning of the word "society" is very often not distinguished from its other meaning - society in general, which expresses the common that is inherent in all specific individual societies, regardless of their type, individual characteristics, time of existence, etc. And to distinguish between these two meanings of the word "society" is extremely necessary for any social scientist, historian above all.
Isolation of a separate concrete society allows us to raise the question of whether a society has an independent existence or its existence is derived from the existence of its constituent individuals. From the very beginning of the theoretical approach to the study of society in philosophical and historical thought, there were two main answers to this question.
One of them was that society is a simple aggregate, a sum of individuals. Therefore, the only real objects of social research are people. No others exist. This point of view is often called sociological nominalism. This kind of view found its extremely clear expression, for example, in one of the works of the famous Russian historian, historiosophist and sociologist Nikolai Ivanovich Kareev (1850 - 1931) "Introduction to the Study of Sociology" (St. Petersburg, 1897). The latter wrote: “Personality is the only real being with which sociology deals. Peoples or separate classes of one and the same people are collective units, consisting of separate individuals.
A similar view was held by the famous German sociologist Max Weber (1864 - 1920). It is most clearly stated in the work "Basic Sociological Concepts" (Russian translation: Selected Works. M., 1990). “For other (for example, legal) cognitive purposes or for practical purposes,” he wrote, “it may, on the contrary, be expedient or even inevitable to consider social formations (“state”, “association”, “joint-stock company”, “institution”) in exactly the same way as separate individuals (for example, as bearers of rights and obligations or as subjects, committing legally relevant actions). For an understanding sociology that interprets people's behavior, these formations are simply processes and connections of the specific behavior of individuals, since only they are carriers of meaningful actions that are understandable to us.
This point of view still has many supporters. In order to save time and space, we confine ourselves to just one statement by Dario Antiseri and Lorenzo Infantino, which opens their preface to the collection of works by the famous Austrian-American economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) “Knowledge, competition and freedom. Anthology of works” (Russian translation: St. Petersburg, 1999). "There is no class, no society as such, - they write, only individuals exist. The social sciences (sociology, economics, historiography, anthropology, etc.) deal with collective concepts like the state, nation, party, revolution, capitalism, society, and so on. The two major strands of thought reflect the collectivist tradition of interpreting such concepts and the individualist tradition. Collectivists (Saint-Simon, Comte, Hegel, Marx, neo-Marxists, structuralists) argue that collectivist concepts correspond to some specific reality, autonomous and independent of people: society, parties, classes mold individuals as real formations, and the scientist is obliged to search and describe the laws of development of these substances. Proponents of methodological individualism (A. Smith, D. Hume, K. Popper, Hayek - closer to us R. Boudon) argue that no specific reality corresponds to collective concepts. Classes, societies, parties, not even armed forces exist. There are only individuals. Only individuals think and act. This is the theoretical core of methodological individualism.
To complete the picture, let's add to K. Popper and F. Hayek another Austrian-American economist - Ludwig von Mises (1881 - 1973), who also dealt with the philosophy of history. In "Theory and History. Interpretation of Socio-Economic Evolution” (1957; Russian translation: M., 2001), he begins by declaring the question “is society the sum of individuals or is it more than this, and is thereby an entity that has an independent reality?” meaningless. “Society is neither the sum of individuals, nor anything more or less. Here arithmetic concepts are not applicable.
But he further develops the concept of sociological nominalism. In an effort to refute "collectivist philosophy", by which he means sociological realism, L. Mises accuses her of "denying the existence of individuals and the actions of individuals." He claims that, according to the views of his opponents, "the individual is a mere phantom, not having a reality, an illusory image, invented by the pseudo-philosophies of the apologists of capitalism.” It is simply difficult to attribute greater stupidity to the supporters of sociological realism. When such arguments are used, it indicates the extreme weakness of the defended point of view.
Neither the authors mentioned above, nor other supporters of this view, could ever bring it to the end consistently. Elsewhere in the same book mentioned above, N.I. Kareev argued: “Society is not a simple collection of individuals who are in mental and practical interaction, but a whole system of these interactions, in which the latter receive certain permanent forms, a certain organization.” Thus, in fact, he moves to a completely different position.
The essence of the second answer to the question posed above lies precisely in the fact that society, although it consists of individuals, is by no means a simple aggregate of them. It is an integral formation that has its own life, not reducible to the existence of its constituent people, a special subject that develops according to its own laws inherent only to it. This point of view is often called sociological realism. Such a view in a fairly clear form was already manifested in the work of Aristotle (384 -322 BC) "Politics" (Russian translations: Works in 4 volumes. Vol. 4. M., 1983; Aristotle. Politics. Athenian Politia, M., 1997 and other ed.). “So, obviously,” the great thinker wrote, “the state exists by nature and by nature precedes every person; since the latter, found itself in an isolated state, is not a self-sufficient being, then its relation to the state is the same as the relation of any part to its whole.
Before those researchers who considered society as a single whole, irreducible to the sum of its constituent individuals, the question of the basis of its integrity inevitably arose. Many of them looked for the origins of this wholeness in the spiritual realm. While doing this, at the same time they could not but see that if the spiritual life of society is understood as the mental, spiritual life of its constituent people, then this will inevitably lead to a transition to the positions of sociological nominalism. Attempts to overcome subjectivism in understanding mental life as the basis of society led some of them to objective idealism and even to religion.
An example is the work of the Russian religious philosopher Semyon Ludwigovich Frank (1877 - 1950) “The Spiritual Foundations of Society. Introduction to Social Philosophy” (1930; // Russian Abroad. From the History of Social and Legal Thought. L., 1991; M., 1992; S.L. Frank. Spiritual Life of Society. M., 1992). Arguing that “public life is spiritual in its very essence, and not material”, S.L. Frank at the same time criticized "social psychologism". His final conclusion was that "social being as a whole is like a system of deities or divine forces, a kind of pantheon in which a given stage or form of human relationship to the Divine is expressed."
It is clear that for any real scientist such conclusions are completely unacceptable. He must inevitably look for another explanation of the integrity of society. A staunch supporter of sociological realism was the famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917), the author primarily of such works as "On the division of social labor" (1893; 1902; last Russian translation: On the division of social labor. Method of sociology. M. , 1991) and The Method of Sociology (1895; 1901). He insisted that society represents a reality independent of individuals, non-individual and supra-individual. This special kind of reality, not reducible to its other types, is included in the universal natural order. Social reality is just as stable and solid as all other types of reality, and accordingly, just like them, it develops according to certain laws.
E. Durkheim did not give a direct answer to the naturally arising question about the nature of this social reality. But since from the very beginning of his scientific activity he insisted on the spiritual nature of all social phenomena (including economic ones), it turned out that this reality was essentially spiritual. E. Durkheim was unable to explain how spiritual reality could be independent of people. And as a result, starting with a sharp critique of psychologism, with an emphasis on the external and coercive nature of social facts, he subsequently began to incline more and more towards a psychological explanation of them.
The desire to find a truly objective basis for society has long pushed thinkers who adhered to sociological realism to the search for analogies between society and the animal organism, and sometimes to the desire to liken society to a biological organism. Such attempts began in antiquity and continued in subsequent times. For example, the term “organism” was used as applied to society by the French educator Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his work “Discourse on the origin and foundations of inequality between people” (1755; Russian translation: J.-J. Rousseau. Treatises. M., 1969 ; On the social contract. Treatises. M., 1998), the French materialist Claude Antoine Helvetius in his works “On the Mind” (1758; Russian translation: Works in 2 vols. T. 1. M., 1973) and “ About a Man” (1769, 1773; Russian translation: Ibid. T. 2. M., 1974).
But the term "organism" as applied to society began to be used quite widely only starting from the 40s of the 19th century. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the founder of positivism and at the same time the founder of sociology as a special experimental science, was one of the first to do this. The latter by no means identified society with a biological organism. It was only important for him to emphasize that society is an integral entity, a special subject of evolution. And in order to emphasize the difference between society and an animal organism, he called it not just an organism, but a social organism.
The term "social organism" was picked up by the famous English positivist philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820 - 1903). He devoted the article “Social organism” to this concept (Russian translation: Spencer G. Experiments scientific, political and philosophical. Minsk, 1998) and constantly used it in his “Fundamentals of Sociology” (Russian translation: St. Petersburg, 1898) and others. works. The main thing for him was "likening society to a living body" in order to substantiate the idea that society is not a simple collection of people, but something whole, irreducible to the sum of its constituent individuals. “... In a social organism,” he wrote, “as in an individual one, there is a life of the whole, completely different from the lives of individual units, although it is made up of these latter.”
In the 70s of the XIX century. a peculiar school appears in sociology, trying not only to draw an analogy between society and a biological organism, but to a large extent, if not completely identify, then at least liken the first to the second. The Russian sociologist Pyotr Fyodorovich Lilienfeld (1829-1903) was rather radical in this respect. Completing the first part of his work “Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future” (St. Petersburg, 1872; in 1873-1881 an expanded edition of this work in German was published in 5 volumes), he wrote: “In it we set ourselves the task of showing that human society is in essence the same real being as all other organisms of nature, and that the whole difference between these latter and social organisms lies only in the degree of perfection.
Somewhat less radical was the French sociologist René Worms (1869-1926). The latter, in his work “Organism and Society” (Russian translation: Social Organism. St. Petersburg, 1897) stated: “The anatomy, physiology and pathology of societies reproduce - on a large scale and with important additions and changes, but still on the same basis - anatomy, physiology and pathology of organisms. The laws that govern the members of the social body are somewhat, at least, similar to the laws that govern the cells of the body. Therefore, everything in society, elements and laws, is similar - we do not say, of course, identically - to what we find in the body of an individual person.
The most moderate position among the representatives of this school was held by the French sociologist Alfred Fulier (1838-1912). Here is what we read in his work "Modern Social Science" (1880; Russian translation: M., 1895): "We have seen above the dispute that is raised about this basic question: is society an organism? Some point to similarities, others to differences; the former answer the question with a complete affirmation, the latter with an absolute negation. But there seems to be a way to reconcile both sides: it is to take into account that similarities justify, as we have already indicated, the name of organisms given to societies, and differences justify the establishment of a special class of organisms that constitute a new group in natural history.
In addition to the above persons, the German economist Alfred Eberhard Scheffle (1831-1903), who wrote the four-volume work The Structure and Life of Social Bodies (1875-1878), and the French scientist Victor Alfred Espipas (1844-1922) with his well-known at that time the book "Society of Animals" (1875; Russian translation: Social Life of Animals. M., 1882.)
This school was called organic. But the term "organic direction" is sometimes used to refer to the whole trend, the supporters of which consider society as a single entity. And if the organic school in the first sense very soon lost popularity, then the organic direction eventually triumphed in social science.
In Russia, the term "social organism" was widely used by the sociologist, historiosophist and jurist Veniamin Mikhailovich Khvostov (1868-1920). He developed this concept both in the article “The Social Organism” (V. M. Khvostov, Moral Personality and Society. M. 1911), and in the work “The Theory of the Historical Process. Essays on the Philosophy and Methodology of History (Moscow, 1914). “Taking into account,” he wrote, “that human society leads its own special life, subject to the action of special laws, and that in this activity it creates products, the creation of which is beyond the power of individual individuals, we conclude that society is not a simple sum of individuals. , but a special whole, and since this living whole lives and develops, we call it organic whole."
At the same time, V.M. Khvostov warns against likening society to a biological organism. “For us,” he continues, “society is an organism only in the sense that it has a special life that is not exhausted by the life of its individual members and is governed by its own laws, the laws of social development. But this organism is of a completely different order than the biological organism.
The term "social organism" was used mainly by sociologists, but not by historians. And therefore, speaking of the social organism, the former had in mind not a special, separate, concrete society, but, first of all, society in general, and thus only concrete, separate societies. But historians, when they used the word "organism" in relation to society, also meant by it not only a separate society. Thus, the well-known Russian historian Ivan Vasilievich Luchitsky (1845 - 1918) in his introductory lecture to the course of modern history said: "The fact is that society, whether it be all of humanity as a whole, or a separate nation, is an organism, an organism of a special kind."
But subsequently, some scientists began to use the phrase "social organism" to refer to a particular society. This can be seen, for example, in the substantially revised and published in 1937, the first part of the first volume of the work of the famous Russian historian, social philosopher and politician Pavel Nikolaevich Milyukov (1859-1943) “Essays on the History of Russian Culture” (last ed.: T. 1-3. M., 1993 - 1995). But for him, too, the category of a separate society appears as a concept not of historical science, but of sociology. He opposes the concept of a separate society and the associated view of humanity as a collection of many separate societies to the "idea of world history." “Scientific sociology,” he wrote, “relegates the point of view of world history to the background. It recognizes a separate social (national) organism as a natural unit of scientific observation. Scientific sociology does not recognize individual national organisms as fixed "types". It studies the evolution of each individual organism and finds in it features of similarity with the evolution of other organisms.
But although many Western and Russian scientists often used the term "social organism", they could not reveal the nature of the connections underlying society: these relations were clearly neither spiritual nor biological. Without dwelling here in detail on the views that existed and exist on the question of the basis of society, for they are discussed in detail in the third part of the work, I will only note that Marxism offered a genuine way out of the situation, which finally revealed the objective, material nature of economic relations (2.4; 3.13) .
The presence of objective, economic relations at the heart of society makes it a kind of material formation. This formation may well be called an organism, but only not biological, but social, because it is based not on biological connections, but on objective social relations that are qualitatively different from them. The term "social organism" or those close to it were sometimes used in relation to society by the founders of Marxism and other prominent representatives of this trend.
In our country, after 1917, the phrase "social organism" ceased to be used. Speaking in 1966 with the justification for the need to introduce the concept of a separate concrete society as the most important category of historical science, I proposed this old term to denote this concept. After that, the phrase “social organism” became widespread and again began to be used by specialists in the field of various social sciences, but not always in the sense I proposed. They began to write about the ethno-social organism, the social organism of kinship, and so on. Social organisms began to be called the most diverse social formations, including social classes, etc. Thus, the term “social organism” entered the scientific circulation, but by no means the concept of a separate concrete society. It was the variety of meanings that began to be invested in the phrase “social organism” that prompted me to abandon it and propose a new term “socio-historical (sociohistorical) organism” to designate a particular society.
1.2.3. The first meaning of the word "society" is a socio-historical (socio-historical) organism
Now that the term "socio-historical (sociohistorical) organism" ( abbreviated - "socior") entered, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with its meaning in more detail. A sociohistorical organism is a separate concrete society, which is a relatively independent unit of historical development. Each socio-historical organism is localized in time and space. It occupies a certain territory. It certainly arose sometime, and many sociohistorical organisms that were born in their time have long since disappeared, left the historical scene.
The concept of a sociohistorical organism is necessary for all social sciences, but it is especially important for historiology. It is socio-historical organisms that are the main, primary subjects of history and at the same time the main objects of historical research. Historians primarily write the history of Assyria, Urartu, Byzantium, Japan, England, France, Russia, and so on.
Each socio-historical organism is made up of people subordinate to one public authority. The boundaries of the socio-historical organism are the boundaries of public power. As applied to a class society, sociological boundaries, as a rule, coincide with state boundaries.
The term "state" itself has two main meanings. One meaning is a certain apparatus of power, an apparatus of coercion. Another is a fairly clearly demarcated territory inhabited by people, which is under the rule of one specific state machine. It is this meaning that is put into this word when they name the number of states in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, in general in the world, etc. The term "state" in this second sense is widely used in historical and social science literature in general to designate the socio-historical organisms of class society.
However, the state in the second sense of the word does not always coincide with the sociohistorical organism. When, as a result of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, a grandiose power arose, stretching from the waters of the Nile to the banks of the Indus, it by no means represented a single socio-historical organism. It was a conglomeration of sociohistorical organisms, united only by the presence of a common ruler. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that after the death of Alexander, his state immediately broke up into several independent states.
In order for the socio-historical organisms united under one authority to grow together and form one socior, time is needed, which is not the same for organisms of different types. Sometimes this fusion does not occur at all. Thus, for example, the British colonial empire never represented a single sociohistorical organism. To a certain extent, this was due to the fact that this empire was not a single state. Great Britain continued as a separate state with its own special citizenship after the formation of the empire. The latter was a conglomerate of sociohistorical organisms, one of which was dominant (metropolis), and the rest were subordinate (colonies).
The fact that the colonies were special socio-historical organisms does not at all mean that they were special states. Only Great Britain was a separate state within the British Empire. The same was the case with the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French colonial empires. In this respect, they all differed from the Russian Empire, which was a single state and a single sociohistorical organism.
Despite certain exceptions, in a class society, by and large, there was a correspondence between states and sociohistorical organisms. The division of one state into several independent states sooner or later led to the formation of several sociohistorical organisms. For example, in Germany after the end of World War II, two independent states arose - the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Accordingly, two socio-historical organisms were formed, which at the same time belonged to two different socio-economic types.
But if the state, political unification can happen quickly, then the process of accretion of several previously independent sociohistorical organisms can drag on for a long time. In October 1990, the GDR ceased to exist and became part of the FRG. A united German state arose again. But the process of merging of West German and East German sociologists has not been fully completed to this day. To a large extent, it was slowed down by their socio-economic heterogeneity.
Since the appearance of humans, there have always been many socio-historical organisms on earth. In most cases, neighboring sociors were closely related. And this allows us to move on to the second meaning of the term "society".
1.2.4. The second meaning of the word "society" is a system of socio-historical organisms
Speaking of society, they often mean not one socio-historical organism, but a whole group, a whole spatially limited system of sociohistorical organisms (socior system). After all, they talk not only about English, French, Polish societies, but also about the society of Western Europe, the society of the Middle East, and so on. And such regional systems of sociohistorical organisms are also objects of study for historians. The latter write works not only on the history of Egypt, Hungary, Belgium, but also on the history of Western Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Latin America, etc.
The boundaries of class socio-historical organisms are more or less definite, because they coincide with the state ones. The situation is different with the boundaries of regional systems of sociohistorical organisms. Different historians hold them in different ways. Some include one or another socior in a given regional system, others, on the contrary, exclude it. And usually it's not justified. Far from being the same, for example, historians draw the borders of Western Europe.
There is no absolute, impassable line between sociohistorical organisms and their systems. The system of sociohistorical organisms can turn into a single sociohistorical organism, and the latter can disintegrate into many independent sociors. There are many examples of this.
At the end of the IV millennium BC. in the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates, many small Sumerian city-states arose, each of which was a completely independent socio-historical organism. These sociohistorical organisms, among which Ur, Uruk, Kish, Lagash, Umma stood out, formed a more or less integral system. At the end of the III millennium BC. all Mesopotamia was united under the rule of Sargon. A single state arose - the Akkadian kingdom, and after it a single socio-historical organism, covering at least a significant part of Mesopotamia.
In contrast to Mesopotamia, in the Nile Valley, class society arose in the form of a large sociohistorical organism - the Early, and then the Ancient (Old) Kingdom of Egypt. This arose at the end of the 4th millennium BC. a major socio-historical organism in the XXIII century. BC. broke up. The first transitional period has begun. The nomes, which were previously parts of one socio-historical organism, have turned into independent sociors.
Thus, on the territory of Egypt, in place of a large sociohistorical organism, a system of small sociohistorical organisms arose. Between all these small Sociores, close relations were maintained. All Egyptians still spoke the same language and shared a common culture. All this gives grounds for singling out such a system of sociohistorical organisms as a special type. I will call such a collection of sociors nesting system. To The set of Sumerian city-states described above also belongs to the nesting systems of sociohistorical organisms.
The first transitional period lasted in Egypt until the 21st century. BC, when the nesting system of sociors turned into a new single socio-historical organism - the Middle Kingdom. In the second half of the XVIII century. BC. there was a new disintegration of the general Egyptian sociohistorical organism. The second transitional period lasted until the beginning of the 16th century. BC, when the third common Egyptian socio-historical organism, the New Kingdom, arose in the Nile Valley. In the middle of the XI century. BC. and it fell apart.
Such phenomena are characteristic not only of the Ancient East. In the middle of the XIV century. AD North-Eastern Russia and North-Western Russia taken together represented a nesting system of socio-historical organisms. It included the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Grand Duchy of Tver, the Grand Duchy of Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal, the Grand Duchy of Ryazan, Novgorod and Pskov lands. By the end of the XV - beginning of the XVI centuries. they were all united under the rule of Moscow. A single state arose and, accordingly, a single socio-historical organism, which later received the name of Russia.
Adherents of the "civilizational approach" usually do not define the key concept of civilization for them. But, if you look closely at the context in which they use it, it is easy to see that civilization means either - which is less common - one or another socio-historical organism with all its inherent culture ("Egyptian civilization", "Chinese civilization"), or - which is much more common - this or that regional system of sociohistorical organisms, which, according to people, has her singled out by a common culture (“Sumerian civilization”, “Hellenic civilization”, “ancient civilization”, “Western civilization”, etc.). One of the classics of the “civilizational approach” is A. J. Toynbee in his main work “Comprehension of History” (Russian abbreviated translation: T. 1-7. M., 1991; T. 8-10, 12. 2000) directly put an equal sign between the concept of civilization and the concept of society. The list of civilizations he compiled includes Sumerian, ancient Chinese, Hittite, Western, and seventeen more "societies."
The ratio of society in the second sense - a system of sociohistorical organisms - and society in the first sense - a sociohistorical organism - is the ratio of the whole and the part. It is quite understandable that the integrity of the system of socio-historical organisms can be very different. The degree of independence of the histories of the sociohistorical organisms that make it up is also not the same.
We have already spoken about the British and other colonial empires, which were not single socio-historical organisms, but aggregates of socio-historical organisms, united by the power of one of them, acting as a metropolis. The dominant sociohistorical organism was the center, the core of this kind of association. Therefore, it can be called - nucleosocior(from lat. nucleus - core). And this kind of association itself was a very peculiar social formation, contradictory combining the features of a system of sociohistorical organisms with the features of a genuine sociohistorical organism. This social association, intermediate between the socior and the socior system, can be called ultrasocior(from lat. ultra- further, more, over, beyond), or power. Ultrasociors (powers) have existed throughout almost the entire history of class society.
The degree of independence of subordinate sociohistorical organisms included in the state could be different. In some cases, they could maintain their own statehood. Such subordinate sociohistorical organisms might be called vassal sociors, or infrasociors(from lat. infra- under, below). Such were the Russian principalities within the Golden Horde.
In other cases, subordinate Sociors were completely deprived of their own statehood. They were ruled by representatives of the dominant sociohistorical organism of the metropolis. It is not so much sociora as hemisociores(from Greek gemi - semi-). In general, in different powers, and sometimes even in the same one, it was possible to observe all degrees of dependence on the mother country, ranging from complete to purely nominal.
A state could represent one single territorial bloc and, in this sense, be a regional system. But it wasn't mandatory. British possessions were scattered around the globe, which did not prevent the existence of the state.
Territorial unity was not a prerequisite for the existence of ordinary systems of sociohistorical organisms. Not all of them were regional in the exact sense of the word. The ancient system included, for example, the Greek city-states scattered along the shores of the Black Sea.
Several regional systems of sociohistorical organisms could, in turn, form a higher order sociological system (a sociological supersystem). The existence of even wider associations is not ruled out. And each of the sociological systems of any hierarchical level was also the subject of the historical process.
In this case, the limiting system would, of course, be one that would include all socio-historical organisms without exception. Such a system did not always exist, but the totality of all not only existing, but also existing sociohistorical organisms was also always called society. This is another, third in a row, meaning of the word "society".
1.2.5. The third meaning of the word "society" is human society as a whole
The third meaning of the term "society" is all existing and existing socio-historical organisms taken together. To convey this meaning of this word, the phrase is usually used "human society as a whole.", and sometimes the word "humanity". But the latter also has several other meanings. By “humanity” they can understand the whole set of people without taking into account their belonging to certain or sociora, and sometimes just a biological species or genus.
Human society as a whole is also an object of study of historical science. Historians write works devoted not only to the histories of individual sociohistorical organisms and their systems, but also to world or world history. In relation to human society as a whole, individual sociohistorical organisms and their systems act as parts of it.
1.2.6. The fourth meaning of the word "society" is society in general
The fourth meaning of the term "society" is society in general irrespective of any particular form of its existence. Society in this sense of the word is not and cannot be an object of historical research, because it does not exist as such, as an independent phenomenon. This does not mean at all that society does not have existence at all. It certainly exists in historical reality, but it does not exist independently, not by itself, but only as that objective general, which is inherent in all socio-historical organisms without exception.
The relationship between the sociohistorical organism and society in general is the relationship between the individual and the general. And like any general, society in general really exists, but not in itself, but only in the individual and through the individual. This individual, in which society in general exists, is the socio-historical organisms. The concept of "society in general" is not an arbitrary mental construct. It has an objective content, because it captures the objective common, inherent in all socio-historical organisms without exception.
1.2.7. The fifth meaning of the word "society" is a society of a certain type in general (a type of society, or a particular society)
Sociohistorical organisms have existed and still exist in great numbers. It is impossible to understand this multitude without classifying sociohistorical organisms, without dividing them into classes and types. A variety of typologies of sociohistorical organisms have been created and are being created. And to designate specific type of society or, which is the same, society in general of a certain type the word "society" is also used.
When society is understood as a society of a certain type in general, then an adjective denoting its type is added to the word "society". Examples are the phrases: “primitive society”, “feudal society”, “capitalist society”, “traditional society”, “industrial society”, “post-industrial society”, etc. Each of these phrases denotes a type of society, singled out according to one or another feature or a combination of certain features.
If a socio-historical organism is a separate one, then society in general of a certain type is certainly general, but one that represents a variety of a broader general, namely, society in general. In other words, a society of a particular type in general is nothing but a species, a type of society, a particular society. A concrete socio-historical organism, a society of a certain type in general, and society in general are related as separate, particular, and universal.
Society in general of a certain type as such, i.e. as a special independent phenomenon does not exist. On this basis, some researchers argue that feudal society in general, capitalist society in general, etc., are pure mental constructions, that they exist only in the minds of scientists, but not on sinful earth.
It is indisputable, of course, that, for example, the concept of "feudal society", like any other concepts, including not only scientific, but also everyday ones ("cat", "table", "house", etc.), has existence only in consciousness. But this concept fixes something fundamentally common that is inherent in all feudal sociohistorical organisms. And this commonality exists not only in the thoughts of the researcher, but also outside his consciousness. But if in historical reality it exists in socio-historical organisms of a given type as their essential identity, as their deep essence, then in the consciousness of the historian this common appears in a “pure” form, in the form of a “pure”, ideal feudal socio-historical organism.
Of course, this ideal feudal socior is a mental construct, but one that expresses the fundamental commonality inherent in all real feudal sociohistorical organisms. This fundamental commonality between all feudal socio-historical organisms does not depend on the consciousness of the researcher just as the individual feudal sociors in which it manifests itself does not depend on his consciousness.
The creation of the concept of "feudal society" was an important step towards revealing the real commonality between all socio-historical organisms of this type, along the path of cognition of their real, objective essence. Everything that has been said about the concept of "feudal society" applies, to one degree or another, to other similar concepts.
It happens that all socio-historical organisms of a certain type form one and only one regional system. In this case, the designation of a certain type of society may coincide with the name of the given system of sociors. For example, ancient society is understood simultaneously as (1) the system of ancient socio-historical organisms that developed in the Mediterranean in the 1st millennium BC, and (2) society of the ancient type in general.
1.2.8. The concept of a sociohistorical organism is one of the most important categories of sciences about society and its history.
As follows from all that has been said, the primary subjects of the historical process are sociohistorical organisms, the secondary ones are their systems, the tertiary one is human society as a whole, i.e. all existing and existing socio-historical organisms taken together. Thus, the concept of a socio-historical organism is the initial and at the same time the most important category of the historical and, in general, of all social sciences.
But, unfortunately, it has not yet entered the conceptual apparatus of any philosophical and historical concept. In particular, it was initially absent from the categorical apparatus of historical materialism.
Indeed, in the last decades of the 20th century, some Western Marxists and scientists close to Marxism tried to introduce it into scientific use. This was started by Louis Pierre Althusser (1918-1990) and Étienne Balibar in Reading Capital (1964; English translation: 1970; 1977). They were followed by Emmanuelle Terray in Morgan and Modern Anthropology and Historical Materialism and Segmental, Lineage Societies, combined into a book entitled Marxism and "Primitive" Societies (1969; English translation: 1972), Samir Amin in monographs “Accumulation on a global scale. Criticism of the Theory of Underdevelopment (1970; English translation: 1974) and Unequal Development. An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism (1973; English translation: 1976), Hamza Alavi in The Structure of Peripheral Capitalism (1982) and others.
But for some reason, to designate a separate concrete society, they began to use the terms "social formation" or even "socio-economic formation", which in Marxist science have always been used in a completely different sense. In historical materialism, it has always been customary to call a socio-economic formation a type of society identified on the basis of its socio-economic structure.
1.2.9. Discovery of two main types of sociohistorical organisms (B. Niebuhr, G. Maine, L. Morgan)
Precisely because the concept of a sociohistorical organism turns out to be one of the most important categories of the historical and other social sciences, there is an urgent need for its further analysis.
Socio-historical organisms can be subdivided into types according to different features that are meaningful: according to the socio-economic system (slave-owning, feudal, etc. societies), the dominant sphere of the economy (agrarian, industrial and post-industrial societies), the form of government (monarchy and republics), the political regime (autocratic and democratic societies), the dominant confession (Christian, Islamic, pagan countries), etc.
But, in addition to the division into such types, there is a division of sociohistorical organisms into two main types according to a sign related to their form, namely, according to the method of their internal organization. The fact that societies can be organized in different ways was noticed as early as the 19th century.
One of the first to draw attention to this was the German researcher of antiquity Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776 - 1831). He is credited for posing the question of the nature of such an institution as the genus. In the three-volume "Roman History" (1811 - 1832), he painted a picture of the change of a society based on the tribal principle, a society with a state organization based on territorial division. And the Romans, according to Niebuhr, are no exception. The tribal structure of society was replaced by a territorial one among the ancient Greeks.
English jurist and legal historian Henry James Sumner Maine (Maine) (1822-1888) in "Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Ancient History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas" (1861; Russian translation: St. Petersburg, 1873) and " Lectures on the Early History of Institutions (1875; Russian translation: Ancient History of Institutions. Lectures. St. Petersburg, 1876) was no longer talking about certain specific societies, but about societies in general. He distinguished between societies based on kinship and those based on land and territory.
This idea was further developed by the great American ethnologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) in his work "Ancient Society, or a Study of the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization" (1877; Russian translation: L., 1933; 1934) . The latter quite clearly singled out two types, or, as he put it, two "plans" of society, which are completely different in their foundations.
“The first in time,” he wrote, “is based on personality and purely personal relationships, and may be called society (societas). The second plan is based on territory and private property and may be called the state (civitas). Political society is organized on a territorial basis, and its relation to the person and property is determined by territorial relations. In ancient society, this territorial plan was unknown. Its appearance constitutes the boundary line between ancient and modern society. L.G. Morgan associated the first type of society with primitiveness, the second - with a civilized, or class, society.
The assertion that sociohistorical organisms of only the second of the two identified types are based on the territory has caused and still causes objections. Primitive communities, which for a long time were the only socio-historical organisms, undoubtedly, were always associated with a certain territory. In the era of transition from primitive to class society, i.e. in a pre-class society, more complex sociohistorical organisms arose, consisting of several communities. One of their varieties is usually called a tribe. A classic example of the latter is described by L.G. Morgan, the Iroquois tribes: Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida. Each of these tribes also had its own territory. The concepts of communal and tribal territory are widely used in the etiological and historical literature.
It is indisputable that all specific individual societies were associated with one or another territory. And the socio-historical organisms of these two types differed not at all in the presence or absence of territory, but in the principles underlying their organization, which predetermined their different attitude to the territory.
1.2.10. The problem of the boundaries of socio-historical organisms
Society is always made up of people. But, as has already been pointed out, it is never a simple combination of them. People form a society insofar as they are included in a certain system of relations that are usually called social. Therefore, society is primarily certain system of social relations, in which people live.
Each socio-historical organism is a separate concrete society, i.e. a certain limited system of relations that exists side by side with other similarly limited systems. It is quite understandable that it includes a limited number of people who live again in a limited area. The most important is the problem of distinguishing people who make up one sociohistorical organism from people who are part of others, i.e. problem of social boundaries. As has already been pointed out, this border is always the border of public power. The members of one socior are under the leadership of one authority, the members of another - under the auspices of another.
There are two main ways of drawing the boundary between socio-historical organisms.
1.2.11. Geosocial organisms (geosociores)
Let's start with sociohistorical organisms of the second, later type, because they are more understandable to modern man, who lives in precisely this kind of sociohistory. The boundary of such a socio-historical organism is the boundary separating the territory it occupies from the territories on which neighboring sociors are located. This border in most cases is also the state border. The borders of the state, as is known, are usually more or less clearly marked. Marks are natural objects (rivers, hills, etc.) or objects artificially created for this purpose (border posts, etc.). All people living on the territory of a given state are included - if it does not represent a power - in the composition of this socio-historical organism.
Territorial are not only the external boundaries of such a socio-historical organism, but also the boundaries between parts; into which it is divided. All these parts occupy certain places in space, are territorial units. The order of arrangement of these subdivisions is also spatial. In short, sociohistorical organisms of this type are spatially organized, have a fixed territorial structure, usually hierarchical. So, for example, the Russian Empire was divided into provinces, those into counties, and the latter into volosts.
The inseparability of a sociohistorical organism of this kind from the territory it occupies finds its quite distinct expression. in that its name can only be territorial: France, Bulgaria, Turkey, etc. Such sociohistorical organisms I will henceforth call geosocial organisms (geosociors). As already mentioned, geosocial organisms in the historical and social science literature in general are most often referred to as states. Another word used for geosociore is "country".
1.2.12. The meaning of the word "country"
The word "country" is used to refer to any of the currently existing geosocial organisms. Countries are called not only the USA, Portugal, Italy, but also Luxembourg, Kuwait, Lesotho, Belize and even Andorra. The situation is more complicated with the use of this term in relation to the past.
As already noted, in certain periods of the history of Ancient Egypt, the regions into which it was subdivided, namely the nomes, were completely independent socio-historical organisms. However, historians never refer to them as countries. They call only the whole of Egypt a country, even in relation to those periods when it was not a single sociohistorical organism, but a system of geosocial organisms.
None of the historians calls either the Grand Duchy of Moscow or the Grand Duchy of Ryazan a country, even in relation to the 14th century, when they were independent geosocial organisms. And to designate Northern (North-Eastern + North-Western) Russia as a whole, the word "country" is often used. Thus, the word "country" is usually not used to designate geosocial organisms that are part of one or another nesting system. But these systems themselves as a whole are often referred to as countries.
In general, the use of the word "country" in relation to the past is largely conditional. After all, it has never been subjected to theoretical analysis by historians. Tradition plays a huge role in the use of this word. If in the 19th and 20th centuries there was one geosocial organism on a particular territory, then it is also called a country in relation to those eras when this space was fragmented between many independent socio-historical organisms. Therefore, the word "country" cannot be considered an exact scientific term, which, of course, does not preclude its use. In what follows, by country I will mean only a geosocial organism.
1.2.13. Geosocial organism and its population
When we come across a geosocial organism, the fact already noted above is especially striking, that although a society always consists of people, it is never a simple collection of them. First of all, society is a special objective formation, a certain system of relations. When it comes to a geosocial organism, it is such a system of social relations that is tightly soldered to a certain piece of the earth's territory and in this sense represents a certain territorial unit. Neither the geosocial organism itself as a whole, nor its constituent parts, in principle, are capable of moving from place to place. But the people who are part of the geosociorea, quite understandably, can move freely throughout its territory, as well as leave its boundaries.
The result is a certain confrontation between the geosocial organism as such, on the one hand, and the people that make up it, on the other. In this opposition, the geosocial organism acts only as a spatially organized system of social relations, and the people included in its composition, only as a simple set of individuals living on its territory, i.e. how is it population.
Of course, there is not and cannot be a country without a population, but nevertheless, a country and its population are always two different phenomena. The totality of people included in the geosocial organism always acts as something qualitatively different from itself. It is one thing - the geosocial organism itself, the country, the state, another - the population of the geosocial organism, the country, the state.
1.2.14. Demosocial organisms (demosociors)
Socio-historical organisms of the first, more ancient type were organized differently than geosocial ones. Although each of them always occupied a certain territory, however, the boundaries of this territory were not his own boundaries. The people who were part of it were separated from everyone else in a different way. Each such sociohistorical organism was a kind of union of individuals with a clearly fixed personal membership.
There were rules that determined a person's belonging to this and not another union, to this and not another sociohistorical organism. This or that person became a member of this union, usually due to the connection that existed between him and the person who, at the time of his birth, was already in this union.
The main principle of membership in such a socio-historical organism was kinship, and not biological, but social. If this organism was small, then at least its core always consisted of relatives. It was possible to get into their number not only by virtue of origin, but also by adoption (adoption or adoption). Another way to enter such a sociore is to marry a member of it.
When the sociohistorical organism was small, the existing rules directly determined the person's belonging to it. Large sociohistorical organisms were subdivided into parts. Sometimes there was a multi-step ladder of such subdivisions. The number of these units and their mutual relations were also fairly fixed. The rules that existed in such a society determined that a person belonged to a lower structural unit, for example, to a subdivision of a clan, thereby to a given clan, and thus to a tribe that included this clan.
The units into which such a large sociohistorical organism was subdivided could be localized. However, the spatial relations between them did not constitute the structure of the socior of which they were parts. A sociohistorical organism of this type was organized according to the principle of formal membership: the membership of individuals and the membership of groups. As a result, he acted simply as a certain organized collection of people.
Of course, in this case, as in the case of any society, there was a certain difference between the sociohistorical organism and its human composition. It was expressed at least in the fact that not every division of this composition was necessarily a division of society. Not society in itself, but only its human composition was divided into children and adults, into men and women.
A sociohistorical organism, having arisen, could exist for a very long time. This is especially true of geosocio- rials , whose age was often calculated for many centuries. But the life span of each member of society is very limited. Therefore, a constant change of members of society, a constant renewal of its human composition is inevitable. The composition of society was constantly updated, but it itself remained as such.
But unlike the geosocial organism, in the sociohistorical organism of the type under consideration, its human composition did not act as a special phenomenon opposing it, like its population. When applied to a sociohistorical organism of this type, one can speak of its human composition, on impossible - about him population. People don't inhabit such a sociohistorical organism, they make up.
This does not mean at all that the term "population" is not applicable at all to the period of pre-class society. Of course, it is possible to speak about the population in relation to this epoch, but only about the population not of certain sociohistorical organisms, but of certain territories, regions, etc.
If we nevertheless try to use the word "population" in relation to a socio-historical organism of this type, then we will end up with something completely different than when we are talking about geosociore. The geosocial organism has a population, has a population. The sociohistorical organism of the type under consideration is itself nothing but a specially organized, specially structured "population", coinciding with its own "population". Therefore, this kind of socio-historical organisms could be called demosocial organisms (demosociors). If a geosocial organism is inseparable from the territory it occupies, then a demosocial organism is inseparable from its personnel.
The consequence was the coincidence of the name of such an organism with the name of the totality of people who were part of it, and each individual person who belonged to it. An example is the name of the Iroquois tribes: Seneca, Cayuga, Mohawk, etc. Seneca is by no means the name of a territory, but at the same time 1) a sociohistorical organism, 2) the totality of its constituent people and 3) each person belonging to it.
If the inseparability of the geosocial organism from the territory it occupies ensures the relative independence of its human composition in relation to itself, then the inseparability of the demosocial organism from its human composition turns into a large degree of its independence in relation to the territory on which it is located. This is expressed primarily in the fact that he can, while maintaining his identity, leave this piece of land and move to another. Unlike geosocial organisms, firmly attached to the territory, demosocial organisms are mobile, mobile.
The closest analogy of demosocial organisms is military units. Each of them represents a certain clearly fixed hierarchically organized circle of people. The regiment consists of battalions, battalions - from companies, companies - from platoons, platoons - from departments. When a person is enlisted in one of the departments, then by the same token he is part of the corresponding platoon, the corresponding company, the corresponding battalion. Regimental battalions can be localized, but their spatial distribution is not directly related to the structure of the unit. Due to this kind of internal organization, the regiment can be transferred to another place, while remaining the same military unit.
1.2.15. More on the difference between demosocial and geosocial organisms
The difference between demosocial and geosocial organisms is so great that the same terms have different meanings when applied to both.
The size of a demosocial organism is determined by the number of people in its composition. The more people there are in its composition, the larger it is. The size of the territory that it occupies is not of fundamental importance, although, of course, a larger organism, as a rule, occupies a larger territory. On the contrary, the size of a geosocial organism is entirely determined by the size of the territory it occupies. The larger its territory, the larger it is, regardless of the size of its population.
The increase in the demosocial organism occurs by increasing the number of its members. For the time being, the growing demosocior may be limited to its original territory. However, sooner or later it becomes crowded on it, and he begins to occupy new lands, displacing other demosocciors from them. But the growth of the territory occupied by the demosocior is not an increase in himself. The territorial expansion of one or another demosocior does not necessarily imply the inclusion in its composition of the demosocial organisms that previously occupied the territory it occupied.
An increase in the size of a demosocial organism can lead to its disintegration into two new ones, which in some cases remain to live in the neighborhood, and in others they may turn out to be far from each other. Demosocial organisms were able not only to separate, but also to merge, parts of one could pass into the composition of another, and so on.
In contrast to a demosocial organism, an increase in a geosocial organism can proceed only by expanding its territory. Together with the new territory, its population is also included. Thus, an increase in the size of one or another geosocial organism occurs at the expense of neighboring geosocials. These latter are either entirely included in its composition, or separate pieces are torn off from them.
Of course, several geosocial organisms can unite and form one larger one. A single geosocial organism can be divided into several independent ones. But this happens differently than in the case of demosocial organisms. The unification of geosocial organisms presupposes the connection of their territories, the disintegration of the geosociore - the division of its territory between the newly emerged states.
As the size of a geosocial organism increases, so does its population. But in itself, the increase in the number of people entering the geosocial organism does not at all mean an increase in its size. If the territory of the geosocial organism does not grow, then its size does not increase, no matter how its population grows. The growth of a geosocial organism and the growth of its population are two different things.
The meaning of the terms "migration", "resettlement" as applied to demosocial organisms differs significantly from the meaning of these same terms when they are used in relation to geosocial organisms.
In the first case, we are talking primarily about the movement from one territory to another of the sociohistorical organisms themselves or their unions and superunions. This was precisely the nature of the Great Migration of the Peoples, which destroyed the Western Roman Empire. This, of course, does not mean that people living in a primitive society can move only as part of socio-historical organisms. Individuals and their groups could easily move from one demosocior to another. But this was a secondary phenomenon. And when a group of people separated from the composition of this or that demosocial did not join another organism, but began to lead an independent existence, it itself became a new demosocial organism.
In the second case, we are talking about the movements of either individuals or their groups across the territory of a geosocial organism, or about their eviction outside of it. At the same time, people are moving, moving, not sociohistorical organisms. A special case is the eviction of a large group of people outside one socio-historical organism, who in a new place form a new geosocior belonging to the same type. An example is the ancient Greek colonization, as a result of which Greek policies arose on the shores of the Black Sea. The British colonies on the east coast of North America arose in a similar way, and in their subsequent development gave rise to the United States. All this can be attributed to Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Kareev N.I. Introduction to the study of sociology. SPb., 1897. S. 103-104.
Weber M. Basic sociological concepts // Selected works. M., 1990. S. 614.
See, for example: Gurevich A.Ya. To the discussion about pre-capitalist formations: formation and way of life // VF. 1968. No. 2. S. 118-119.
Morgan L. G. Ancient society. L., 1934. S. 7.
On the nature of kinship, see: Semenov Yu.I. Origin of marriage and family. M., 1974.
