The Theory of Five Social Formations in the Development of Human Society

Marxist theory that the development history of human society can be divided into five social formations, i.e. primitive society, slave society, feudal society, capitalist society and communist society.

Social formations are forms of existence of society, a unity of economic foundation and superstructure appropriate to a given stage of development of productive forces. Marx held that the social structure can be divided into different economic periods according to the mode and method of the combination of the workers and the means of production. In Wage-Labor and Capital written by Marx in 1847, he pointed out: “The relations of production in their totality constitute what is called the social relations, society, and, moreover, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with peculiar, distinctive characteristics. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of production, each of which denotes a particular stage of development in the history of mankind.” Later, in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy of 1859, Marx further pointed out: “In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals’ social conditions of existence—but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.” In the 1930s, according to Marx’s thought, Stalin put forth in the History of The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course: “Five main types of relations of production are known to history: primitive communal, slave, feudal, capitalist and socialist.” At that time, History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik): Short Course was regarded as “the highest synthesis and summary of the world communist movement of the past hundred years” and had a tremendous influence, the “theory of five social formations” became the fundamental ground for theoretical circles to elaborate the laws of historical evolution.

The theory of successive evolution of five social formations as elucidated by Marx was chiefly generalized from the perspective of world history, rather than merely deduced according to the development of these countries. It is necessary to understand the five social formations of the development of human society from the perspective of the dialectical unity of the general and the diverse. Historical development is neither the so-called “unilinear theory” which denies the diversity and complexity nor the so-called “multilinear theory” which denies the general laws of historical development. Historical development is the dialectical unity of generality (laws) and diversity (realization of laws). From the overall trend and general process of the development of human history, from the whole of the development of the world history, the development of the human history has undergone five social formations from lower to higher, but, from the concrete manifestation of generality, from the path of realization of universal laws, the concrete paths of development of different nations and countries in the world are different. The development of world history as a whole follows general laws it is by no means precluded, but, on the contrary, presumed, that certain periods of development may display peculiarities in either the form or the sequence of this development.

The theory of five social formations in the development of human society is an important theory of Marxism on the division of social formations and an important component part of the materialist conception of history. It embodies the dialectical unity of the productive forces and the relations of production, and the dialectical unity of unity and diversity, of progress and twists and turns. The theory of five social formations has a great guiding significance for us to correctly analyze the phases of social development and solve the real problems in the process of social development.