Social progress: essence, types, criteria.

History shows that no society stands still, but is constantly changing. . social change is the transition of social systems, communities, institutions and organizations from one state to another. Based on the changes, the process is carried out social development. The concept of "social development" specifies the concept of "social change". social development- irreversible, directed change of social systems. Development involves the transition from simple to complex, from lower to higher, and so on. In turn, the concept of "social development" is specified by such qualitative characteristics as "social progress" and "social regression"

Social Progress- this is such a direction of development of human society, which is characterized by an irreversible change in humanity, as a result, a transition is made from a lower to a higher one, from a less perfect state to a more perfect one. If the sum of the positive consequences of large-scale changes in society exceeds the sum of the negative ones, then we speak of progress. Otherwise, regression takes place.

Regression- a type of development characterized by a transition from higher to lower.

Thus progress is both local and global. Regression is only local.

Usually, social progress does not mean one or another progressive change in individual social communities, layers and groups or individuals, but the upward development of the whole society as a whole, the movement towards the perfection of all mankind.

The mechanism of social progress in all systems is the emergence of new needs for various fields social life and finding ways to satisfy them. New needs arise as a result production activities of man, they are associated with the search and invention of new means of labor, communication, organization of social life, with the expansion and deepening of the scale of scientific knowledge, the complication of the structure of human creative and consumer activity.

Very often, the emergence and satisfaction of social needs is carried out on the basis of an open conflict of interests of various social communities and social groups, as well as the subordination of the interests of some social communities and groups to others. In this case, social violence turns out to be an inevitable companion of social progress. Social progress, as a consistent ascent to more complex forms social life is carried out as a result of the resolution of contradictions that unfold at the previous stages and phases of social development.

The source, the root cause of social progress, which determines the desires and actions of millions of people, is their own interests and needs. What are the human needs that community development? All needs are divided into two groups: natural and historical. Natural human needs are all social needs, the satisfaction of which is necessary for the preservation and reproduction of human life as a natural biological being. Human needs are limited biological structure person. The historical needs of man are all social and spiritual needs, the satisfaction of which is necessary for the reproduction and development of man as a social being. None of the groups of needs can be satisfied outside of society, outside the development of social material and spiritual production. Unlike natural needs, the historical needs of man are generated by the course of social progress, are unlimited in development, due to which social and intellectual progress is unlimited.

However, social progress is not only an objective, but also a relative form of development. Where there are no opportunities for the development of new needs and their satisfaction, the line of social progress stops, periods of decline and stagnation occur. In the past, there were often cases of social regression, the death of previously established cultures and civilizations. Consequently, as practice shows, social progress in world history takes place in a zigzag pattern.

The entire experience of the twentieth century refuted the one-factor approach to development modern society. The formation of a particular social structure is influenced by many factors: the progress of science and technology, the state of economic relations, device political system, the type of ideology, the level of spiritual culture, the national character, the international environment or the existing world order and the role of the individual.

There are two types of social progress: gradual (reformist) and spasmodic (revolutionary).

Reform- partial improvement in any sphere of life, a series of gradual transformations that do not affect the foundations of the existing social order.

Revolution- a complex abrupt change in all or most aspects of social life, affecting the foundations of the existing system and representing the transition of society from one qualitative state to another.

The difference between reform and revolution is usually seen in the fact that reform is a change implemented on the basis of values ​​existing in society. Revolution, on the other hand, is a radical rejection of existing values ​​in the name of a reorientation towards others.

One of the tools for the movement of society along the path of social progress based on a combination of reforms and revolution in modern Western sociology is recognized modernization. Translated from English, "modernization" means modernizing. The essence of modernization is associated with the spread throughout the globe social relations and values ​​of capitalism. Modernization is a revolutionary transition from pre-industrial to industrial or capitalist society carried out through comprehensive reforms, it implies a fundamental change in social institutions and the way of life of people, covering all spheres of society.

Sociologists distinguish between two types of modernization: organic and inorganic. organic modernization is a moment of the country's own development and has been prepared by the entire course of previous development. It occurs as a natural process of progressive development of social life during the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Such modernization begins with a change in public consciousness.

Inorganic Modernization occurs as a response to an external challenge from more developed countries. It is a method of "catching up" development, undertaken by the ruling circles of a particular country, with the aim of overcoming historical backwardness and avoiding foreign dependence. Inorganic modernization begins with economics and politics. It is carried out by borrowing foreign experience, acquiring advanced equipment and technology, inviting specialists, studying abroad, restructuring forms government controlled and norms of cultural life on the model of advanced countries.

In the history of social thought, three models of social change have been proposed: downward movement, from top to bottom; movement along vicious circle- cycles; movement from higher to lower - progress. These three options have always been present in all theories of social change.

The simplest type of social change is linear, where the amount of change occurring is constant at any given time. The linear theory of social progress is based on the progress of the productive forces. The events of the last quarter of the 20th century have shown that we will have to part with the idea that the key and, in fact, the only source of development are changes in the productive forces and production relations. The rise of the productive forces does not yet guarantee progress. Life shows that an unlimited increase in the material means of life, taken as a blessing, turns into disastrous consequences for a person. For a long period, the understanding of social progress was associated with industrial development, with high rates economic growth and the creation of a large machine industry. The conditions and forms of formation of economic, political and social life are subject to the development of technical and economic parameters, the achievement of industrial technology. But in the last third of the twentieth century, the euphoria of industrial and technical optimism began to wane. Industrial development not only threatened social and cultural values, but also undermined its own foundation. In the West, they started talking about the crisis of industrialism, the signs of which were the destruction of the environment and the depletion of natural resources. Increasingly obvious is the discrepancy between the level of scientific and technical and economic development the level of satisfaction of human needs. The very concept of social progress has also changed. Its main criterion is to bring the social structure in line not so much with the requirements of the development of technology, but, first of all, with the natural nature of man.

Cyclic changes are characterized by the successive passage of stages. According to this theory, social development does not proceed in a straight line, but rather in a circle. If in a directed process each subsequent phase differs from any other preceding it in time, then in a cyclic process the state of the changing system at a later time will be the same as it was earlier, i.e. exactly the same, but at a higher level.

In everyday social life, a lot is organized cyclically: for example, agricultural life - and in general the whole life of agrarian societies - is seasonal, cyclical, since it is determined by natural cycles. Spring is sowing time, summer, autumn is harvest time, winter is a pause, lack of work. Everything repeats the next year. good example The cyclic nature of social change is the change of generations of people. Each generation is born, passes through a period of social maturation, then a period of vigorous activity, followed by a period of old age and natural completion. life cycle. Each generation is formed in specific social conditions, therefore it is not like previous generations and brings to life, politics, economics, culture something of its own, new, which has not yet been in social life.

Sociologists of different directions record the fact that many social institutions, communities, classes and even entire societies change in a cyclic pattern - the emergence, growth, flourishing, crisis and decay, the emergence of a new phenomenon. Long-term cyclical changes are associated with the rise and fall of historically specific civilizations. It is they that Spengler and Toynbee have in mind when speaking of civilizational cycles.

About the development of cyclic ideas in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes it is said: “What was, will be; and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

In the records of Herodotus (5th century BC), a scheme is given for applying the cycle to political regimes: monarchy - tyranny - oligarchy - democracy - ochlocracy. In the works of Polybius (200-118 BC) a similar idea is made that all states go through inevitable cycles of growth - zenith - decline.

Social processes can go in a spiral when successive states, although fundamentally similar, are not identical. An upward spiral means a repetition of a process at a relatively higher level, a downward spiral means a repetition at a relatively lower level.

The subject matter is closely related to the problem of social change. social progress.

One of the first scientific concepts social development as successive advancement of societies on ascending levels of progress, which is determined knowledge gain, belongs to A. Saint-Simon.

His ideas were developed by the founder O. Comte. Comte's law of the intellectual evolution of mankind directly indicates the direction and criterion of social progress - the degree of advancement to the highest in his concept, the scientific (positive) stage of development. G. Spencer, sharing the idea of ​​the non-linear nature of evolution, assumed measure social progress by the degree of societal sophistication achieved. Social evolution is similar to biological and gradually leads to the fact that the world is getting better. In the theory of K. Marx, the issue of social progress was solved almost unambiguously. The attainment of the highest stage of human development—the construction of a classless communist society, where the free labor of free people will rule—is inevitable, although remote in time.

If a O. Comte, G. Spencer and E. Durkheim designed concept of progress as a two-way process of differentiation and integration regardless of its beneficial effects, then L. Ward, N. Mikhailovsky and others believed that progress is to increase human happiness or the reduction of human suffering. In one of his first works P. Sorokin pointed out that both of these currents are insufficient and they need to be synthesized. Otherwise, the theory of progress runs the risk of giving the formula of stagnation instead of the formula of progress.

Most supporters social evolutionism convinced of presence of intellectual and technical progress, however, about moral progress, opinions differ. Those who believe that moral progress exists belong to the current of evolutionary ethics. . They proceed from the fact that the very existence of morality as the basis for the interaction and mutual assistance of people is already the most important factor in the survival of society. Moral evolution does not cancel struggle for existence, but humanizes her, forcing to find more and more soft ways struggle.

For a long time, evolutionists were dominated by the idea that evolution is unidirectional for all societies, when each of them goes through successively the same stages of development on the way to progress. In the twentieth century this view was recognized as untenable on the basis of anthropological research. It turned out that not only non-Western, but also many European countries developed not according to one, but according to different scenarios, which included a different number and sequence of stages.

On a new basis, the evolutionary approach was revived in last years: evolution is not unidirectional, but can go in many directions. According to the theory of evolutionary changes of the structural functionalist T. Parsons, societies tend to become more and more differentiated in their structures and functions, and new structures should be more functionally adapted than the former ones.

The position of supporters of cyclical development differs significantly. and periodic economic crises raised doubts about the general progressive development of mankind. Thus, the German scientist Oswald Spengler in his book The Decline of Europe (1918) justified the periodization of the development and decline of cultures by analogy with the stages of the human life cycle, including decline and death. In his opinion, each of the eight cultures he studied existed for about 1000 years. Therefore, if we consider that Western European culture was born about 900 years ago, then its end is already close.

The English historian Arnold Toynbee also believed that the development of civilizations takes place along one path, improving and moving towards decline along similar stages. Arising as a response to any challenge of natural or human factors, civilization flourishes as long as its elite is able to provide a counter to this challenge. Otherwise, there is a split and disintegration of civilization and, as a result of the growth of internal conflicts, a movement towards decline.

The cyclical theories should also include the sociocultural dynamics of P. Sorokin, which contains a very pessimistic assessment of the prospects for the development of modern Western society.

Another example of cyclical theories is the concept of "world-economy" by I. Wallerstein, according to which third world countries will not be able to repeat the path, passed by the states - leaders modern economy; capitalist world-economy, which originated more than 500 years ago, in 1967-1973. entered the inevitable final phase of the life cycle crisis phase.

Social progress and forecasting in philosophy

Modern is carried out within the framework of scientific and technological progress, which in turn acts as a party social progress.

Issues of social progress were paid attention to by D. Vico, I.G. Herder, A. Turgot, J. Condorsse, O. Comte, K. Marx, F. Engels and others.

Social Progress- this is an objective trend of the upward development of mankind, expressed in the improvement of the forms of human life, needs, abilities to satisfy them, in the development of science, technology, technology, means mass media, medicine, etc.

The question of the criteria for social progress is debatable. Some researchers in as a criterion of social progress call the level of development of the mode of production, others in this capacity single out the level of development of the productive forces of society, and others reduce it to labor productivity. It seems that it can be accepted as the most representative point of view, according to which, as a criterion of social progress, one can take the level of development of productive forces, expressed in labor productivity.

In philosophical explanation public process For a long time, two points of view fought - evolutionary and revolutionary.

Some philosophers preferred evolutionary development societies while others saw great attraction in revolutionary changes in social life. It is obvious that one should be thoughtful about the ways and means of social progress. The course of the latter does not preclude a combination of revolutionary and evolutionary transformations in social life. When carrying out progressive transformations and reforms, one should be guided by the fact that their implementation does not turn into a decline in the economy, a decrease in the level of development of productive forces and a reduction, but, on the contrary, an increase in the economic wealth of society based on an increase in the level of development of productive forces and labor productivity.

Anticipation of the future in various forms has always played an important role in the life of society. The significance of foresight especially increased in the turning points of history, in periods of acute social conflicts. This is especially characteristic of the modern era, when it becomes obvious that both the distant and the near future of mankind will be radically different from its present and recent past.

foresight is knowledge about the future, i.e. about what is not yet in reality, but what is potentially contained in the present in the form of objective and subjective prerequisites for the expected course of development. Scientific foresight and social forecasting must answer not only the question of what may happen in the future, but also answers to such questions as when it should be expected, what forms the future will take, and what is the measure of probability of this forecast.

• extrapolation;
• modeling;
• expertise.

Most reliable method social forecasting - expertise. Any social forecast combines scientific and ideological purposes. There are four types of forecasts: search; normative; analytical; prognosis-caution. Anticipating the future is an interdisciplinary study, and it is fruitful only in the process of integrating humanitarian, natural science and technical knowledge.

Lecture, abstract. 47. Social progress. - concept and types. Classification, essence and features.

Social progress is a directed process during which the structure of society becomes more perfect and certain ethical values ​​are realized: happiness, freedom, prosperity, knowledge.

The idea of ​​progress fits logically into the directed transformation model and into some versions of development theory. The classical structural-functional approach is based on the idea of ​​equilibrium of social systems, while cyclical theories imply that in its development society periodically returns to the starting point. The concept of progress acquires some meaning only when combined with the idea of ​​transformation (i.e., changes in society itself, and not just changes within it). American psychologist Richard Nisbet defines progress as the idea that humanity slowly, gradually and for a long time crawled out of the initial conditions of fear, lack of culture, ignorance, rising to more and more high levels civilization. Such a movement will continue in the present and future, despite random deviations.

The modern interpretation of social progress is based on the following ideas:
1. the idea of ​​irreversible time, flowing linearly and ensuring the continuity of the past, present and future (according to this idea, progress is a positively assessed difference between the past and the present);
2. the idea of ​​directed movement, in which no stage is repeated;
3. the idea of ​​a cumulative process, proceeding either incrementally, step by step, or in a revolutionary way;
4. an idea of ​​the difference between the typical, necessary stages of the process;
5. understanding of the endogenous causes that cause self-propulsion (self-development) of the process;
6. the idea of ​​the inevitability, necessity and natural nature of the process, which cannot be stopped or rejected;
7. the idea of ​​improvement, improvement, that each subsequent stage is better than the previous one.

Progress is always correlated with values, that is, it is not a purely descriptive, detailed, objectified concept, but rather a value category. The same process can be qualified in different ways depending on the supposed value preferences, which are completely different for different individuals, groups, classes, nations. If absolute progress does not exist, then there is always a need for a scale of values ​​taken as the measure, or criterion, of progress.

There are areas where the choice of progress criteria is highly context dependent. In the 19th century and for most of the 20th century.

industrialization, urbanization, modernization were considered synonymous with progress, and only recently it was discovered that they can have too far-reaching consequences (crowded cities, congested airports, traffic jams on freeways, overproduction of goods, etc.) and that good things can have very unpleasant side effects. effects (dispersion of resources, pollution and destruction of the environment, diseases of civilization). What is happening now in the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe the processes of democratization, the development of entrepreneurship and the free market are accompanied by an increase in unemployment and poverty, a weakening of social discipline, an increase in the level of crime and delinquency, local conflicts, uncontrollability and the widespread dissemination of mass culture.

For long period intellectual history many thinkers, from Plato to Thomas More and Marx, believed that progress could be maintained at all levels of society for all its members at the same time, and eventually full and universal prosperity could be achieved.

Manifestations of the crisis of the idea of ​​progress:
1. The idea of ​​progress was replaced by the spread of mysticism, rebellion against reason and science, general pessimism, the idea of ​​degeneration, destruction and decline of culture.
2. The idea of ​​the need for constant economic and technological growth has been replaced by the idea of ​​growth limits.
3. Belief in reason and science was replaced by the belief in the dominant role of emotions, intuition, the subconscious and the unconscious, the assertion of irrationalism.
4. The statement about the importance, the highest value of life on earth was replaced by a sense of meaninglessness, anomie and alienation.
5. The ideas of utopianism survived the collapse. The final blow to utopian thinking came with the fall of the communist system.
6. The leitmotif of the late XX - early XXI century. the idea of ​​crisis became widespread. At the same time, people tend to view the social crisis as chronic, general and do not foresee its future weakening.

Some thinkers give great importance technical development, considering domination over nature as the ultimate measure of progress. Among the particular criteria of progress we find the following: salvation, knowledge, community of individuals, freedom (negative and positive), emancipation, mastery over nature, justice, equality, abundance, choice and equal life opportunities.

In the extensive literature on social progress, there is currently no single answer to the main question: what is the general sociological criterion of social progress?

A relatively small number of authors argue that the very formulation of the question of a single criterion of social progress is meaningless, since human society- a complex organism, the development of which is carried out along different lines, which makes it impossible to formulate a single criterion. Most of the authors consider it possible to formulate a single general sociological criterion of social progress. However, already in the very formulation of such a criterion, there are significant discrepancies.

Condorcet (like other French enlighteners) considered the development of the mind to be the criterion of progress. Utopian socialists put forward a moral criterion for progress. Saint-Simon believed, for example, that society should adopt a form of organization that would lead to the implementation of the moral principle that all people should treat each other as brothers. A contemporary of the utopian socialists, the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775-1854) wrote that the solution of the question of historical progress is complicated by the fact that supporters and opponents of the belief in the improvement of mankind are completely entangled in disputes about the criteria of progress. Some talk about the progress of mankind in the field of morality, others - about the progress of science and technology, which, as Schelling wrote, from a historical point of view, is rather a regression, and offered his own solution to the problem: the criterion in establishing the historical progress of the human race can only be a gradual approximation to the legal system. Another point of view on social progress belongs to G. Hegel. He saw the criterion of progress in the consciousness of freedom. As the consciousness of freedom grows, the progressive development of society takes place.

As you can see, the question of the criterion of progress occupied the great minds of modern times, but did not find a solution. The disadvantage of all attempts to overcome this problem was that in all cases only one line (or one side, or one sphere) of social development was considered as a criterion. And reason, and morality, and science, and technology, and legal order, and consciousness of freedom - all these indicators are very important, but not universal, not embracing the life of a person and society as a whole.

The dominant idea of ​​infinite progress inevitably led to what seemed to be the only possible solution question; the main, if not the only, criterion of social progress can only be development material production, which, ultimately, predetermines the change in all other aspects and spheres of society. Among Marxists, V.I. Lenin, who back in 1908 called for considering the interests of the development of productive forces as the highest criterion of progress. After October, Lenin returned to this definition and emphasized that the state of the productive forces is the main criterion for all social development, since each subsequent socio-economic formation finally defeated the previous one precisely because it opened up more scope for the development of the productive forces, achieved a higher productivity of the social labor.

A serious argument in favor of this position is that the very history of mankind begins with the manufacture of tools and exists due to continuity in the development of productive forces.

It is noteworthy that the conclusion about the state and level of development of the productive forces as the general criterion of progress was shared by the opponents of Marxism, the technists, on the one hand, and the scientists, on the other. A legitimate question arises: how could the concepts of Marxism (i.e., materialism) and scientism (i.e., idealism) converge at one point? The logic of this convergence is as follows. The scientist discovers social progress, first of all, in the development of scientific knowledge, but after all scientific knowledge acquires the highest meaning only when it is realized in practice, and, above all, in material production.

In the process of the ideological confrontation between the two systems, which is still only fading into the past, the technologists used the thesis of the productive forces as the general criterion of social progress to prove the superiority of the West, which was and is going ahead in this indicator. The disadvantage of this criterion is that the assessment of production forces involves taking into account their number, nature, the level of development achieved and the productivity of labor associated with it, the ability to grow, which is very important when comparing different countries and stages of historical development. For example, the number of productive forces in modern India is greater than in South Korea and their quality is lower. If we take the development of productive forces as the criterion of progress; evaluating them in dynamics, this presupposes a comparison no longer from the point of view of the greater or lesser development of the productive forces, but from the point of view of the course, the speed of their development. But in this case, the question arises, which period should be taken for comparison.

Some philosophers believe that all difficulties will be overcome if we take the mode of production of material goods as a general sociological criterion of social progress. A weighty argument in favor of such a position is that the foundation of social progress is the development of the mode of production as a whole, that by taking into account the state and growth of productive forces, as well as the nature of production relations, it is possible to show much more fully the progressive nature of one formation in relation to another.

Far from denying that the transition from one mode of production to another, more progressive, underlies progress in a number of other areas, opponents of the point of view under consideration almost always note that the main question remains unresolved: how to determine the very progressiveness of this new production method.

Rightly believing that human society is, first of all, a developing community of people, another group of philosophers puts forward the development of the person himself as a general sociological criterion of social progress. It is indisputable that the course of human history really testifies to the development of people who make up human society, their social and individual strengths, abilities, and inclinations. The advantage of this approach is that it allows measuring social progress by the progressive development of the very subjects of historical creativity - people.

The most important criterion of progress is the level of humanism of the society, i.e. the position of the individual in it: the degree of its economic, political and social liberation; the level of satisfaction of its material and spiritual needs; the state of her psychophysical and social health. According to this point of view, the criterion of social progress is the measure of freedom that society is able to provide to the individual, the degree of individual freedom guaranteed by society. The free development of a person in a free society also means the disclosure of his truly human qualities - intellectual, creative, moral. The development of human qualities depends on the living conditions of people. The more fully the various needs of a person in food, clothing, housing, transport services, his requests in the spiritual field are satisfied, the more moral relations between people become, the more accessible for a person are the most diverse types of economic and political, spiritual and material activities. How more favorable conditions for the development of the physical, intellectual, mental forces of a person, his moral principles, the wider the scope for the development of individual qualities inherent in each individual person. In short, the more humane the conditions of life, the more opportunities for the development of the human in a person: reason, morality, creative forces.

Let us note, by the way, that inside this indicator, which is complex in its structure, one can and should be singled out, which, in fact, combines all the others. That, in my opinion, is the average life expectancy. And if it in a given country is 10-12 years less than in the group of developed countries, and besides, it shows a tendency to further decrease, the question of the degree of progressiveness of this country should be decided accordingly. For, as one of the famous poets said, "all progress is reactionary if a person collapses."

The level of society's humanism as an integrative (ie, passing through and absorbing changes literally in all spheres of society's life) criterion incorporates the criteria discussed above. Each subsequent formational and civilizational stage is more progressive in terms of personality - it expands the range of rights and freedoms of the individual, entails the development of his needs and the improvement of his abilities. It suffices to compare in this respect the status of a slave and a serf, a serf and a wage worker under capitalism. At first, it may seem that the slave-owning formation, which marked the beginning of the era of exploitation of man by man, stands apart in this respect. But, as F. Engels explained, even for a slave, not to mention the free ones, slavery was a personal progress: if before the prisoner was killed or eaten, now he was left to live.

So, the content of social progress was, is and will be the "humanization of man", achieved through the contradictory development of his natural and social forces, that is, the productive forces and the whole range of social relations. From what has been said above, we can draw a conclusion about the universal criterion of social progress: progressive is that which contributes to the rise of humanism. The thoughts of the world community about the "limits to growth" have significantly actualized the problem of criteria for social progress. Indeed, if in the social world around us not everything is as simple as it seemed and seems to the progressives, then what are the most significant signs that can be used to judge the progressiveness of social development in general, the progressiveness, conservatism or reactionary nature of certain phenomena?

We note at once that the question “how to measure” social progress has never received an unequivocal answer in the philosophical and sociological literature. This situation is largely due to the complexity of society as a subject and object of progress, its diversity and multi-quality. Hence the search for its own, local criterion for each sphere of public life. But at the same time, society is an integral organism and, as such, it must meet the basic criterion of social progress. People, as G. V. Plekhanov noted, do not make several stories, but one story of their own relations. Our thinking is able and must reflect this unified historical practice in its entirety.