Tertiary Formation Of K. Marx As A Project Of Social Development

Abstract

The teachings of K. Marx on the primary, secondary and tertiary formations presuppose the unity of the historical and logical aspects of analysis. The historical aspect of the analysis of social development is presented in a conceptualized form as the interconnected development of property, the market, goods and money in the primary and secondary formations. The tertiary formation must historically have a different order of formation. Our idea is that each of these historical formations has its own understudy in the field of logical being. The logical, constituting the “backbone” of the theoretical guide to practical action, is presented by K. Marx as a “form of value” for the primary formation, a “form of surplus value” for the secondary formation. We hypothetically assume that the historical tertiary formation should be logically duplicated in the “form of use value”, the development of which acts as a reverse absorption of value by use value. Thus, a deep historical analysis of the primary and secondary formations, a logical analysis of the transition of the “form of value” to the “form of surplus value” will highlight the logic of the future social development of mankind. The criterion by which the primary and secondary formation is considered is the "freedom" of the. Consequently, in the tertiary formation, “the free development of each, which has become a condition for the development of all,” is declared, which also involves the solution of the problem of combining the single and the general.

Keywords: Use valuesurplus valueformationssocial development

Introduction

The legacy of Marx (1909) was often considered by the scientists of the XX century in the aspect of economic views. A philosophical reading of the main points of the theories: the form of value, the form of surplus value, and the form of use value was clearly not enough. Marxists often tracked the historical development of the categories of value and surplus value, but little attention was paid to the logical analysis of development from value to surplus value, and then use value. Over the past decade, we have been developing the idea of a logical transition of the theory of value to the theory of surplus value. The supposedly logical analysis of economic categories can be transferred to an understanding of social formations in the interpretation of Marx.

Problem Statement

The research problem is the logic of the tertiary formation, which should be the logic of the mentioned reverse absorption of value by use value.

Research Questions

The subject of the research is the form of value, the form of surplus value and, to a greater extent, the form of use value.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to search for the methodological foundations of the primary, secondary, and ideally tertiary formations (Marx, 2007).

Research Methods

The study of Marx’s (1909) three formations is based on dialectical logic, comparative philosophical analysis, and subject-energy analysis.

Findings

The doctrine of Marx (2007) on the three formations that humanity undergoes in its development, in our opinion, not only has not lost its heuristic significance, but is becoming one of the leading conceptual schemes for the modern comprehension of history. The criterion, from the point of view of which the historical process is investigated, is the possibility of individual personality development. Each of the formations, according to Marx, objectively creates its own subject conditions for the formation of man. At the same time, he distinguishes between two large periods: the background and the history itself. In the course of the prehistory, objective, material, objective conditions of being of a person as a person are laid. A “second nature” arises as a cultural habitat that each new generation will have to master. When this environment, the “second nature” of man is only being created, man as a goal of this process appears rather by chance than historically necessary. The active objectification by a person of himself in the external world turns into an alienation during the prehistory, since the development of relations between people and relations between man and nature changes the emphasis from directly local social relations to indirectly social, materialized ones.

The growth of labor productivity affects the form of ownership, which in the early stages of the history realizes in its development the tendency of atomization of property. The primary formation, called by Marx the society of personal dependence, develops precisely under the sign of the atomization of property. This in the long term contains the possibility of the reification of relations between individuals and the reification of their consciousness. The primary formation is predominantly human independence from natural living conditions due to personal dependence on the forms of social life itself. The primitive communal, slave-holding and feudal modes of production, which, each in its own way, demonstrates relations of personal dependence, fall under the primary formation. The atomization of property as an internal trend of the primary formation prepares the future dominance of the market, commodity-money relations in the secondary formation. The patriarchal subjective originality of production methods within the framework of the primary formation gradually turns out to be a flayer that covers the logic of profits, the logic of “universal venality”.

The secondary formation, the society of material dependence presupposes predominantly personal independence of a person from society due to the onset of real dependence on a thing, on goods, on money. The "old mole" of atomization, which "dug well" in the depths of the primary formation, has now come to the surface of the social being of the secondary formation. The atomization of property brought with it in the secondary formation the whole bunch of phenomena associated with it. Things predominantly built in between man and man in their relations, use values for the most part took the form of goods, values, a developed world market appeared, money began to play a very significant role, mastering even those aspects of social life into which it was difficult for them to enter. The historical tendency of property atomization in the primary formation has been replaced by the historical tendency of mass loss of property by the individual private owner in the secondary formation. The employee massively began to separate from the owner. Individual private property was at the peak of atomization within the framework of the primary formation; it crowns this tendency. The individual as the owner is the limit of division, atomization of property. It appears as that coveted “atom-property”, which was formed as an internal tendency of the historical process and itself formed this process as an ideal.

The “other” achievement of this ideal in the course of bourgeois revolutions is the universal dependence of the individual private owner on the market, on commodity-money circulation. The non-guaranteed existence of individual private property, the randomness and precariousness of its position due to dependence on a mass of unexpected natural and market circumstances, begin to massively destroy the individual private owner, his property is denied. K. Marx, using the Hegelian dialectical "manner of expression" refers to the process of mass ruin of an individual private owner as the first negation (according to the law of negation of negation). That is, the place of the thesis, the initially denied being, is occupied precisely by individual private property. Denial appears as the first expropriation, the expropriation of the owner-worker, carried out spontaneously by the market. The employee is separated from the owner, denied as an individual private owner. Accordingly, the energetic, active side, called the labor force, is largely separated from the objective side of human life, since the objective side is connected by things owned by a person.

The antithesis to individual private property is property, which concentrates property that is separate from individuals. Marx calls it capitalistic. The condition for its use by the worker is now the will of the capitalist, the bourgeois, who has integrated himself between the worker and his means of production, owning the latter as capitalist property. The self-expansion of advanced money appears as capital and constitutes the historical essence of the secondary formation. Atomization in the primary formation gave way to concentration in the secondary formation. Money, as a universal equivalent, brings to the fore the unifying forces of history, albeit in an abstract form. If for the primary formation the determining category was, rather, the category of value, then for the secondary formation the category of surplus value became the determining one. Accordingly, in philosophical, methodological and projective terms, K. Marx’s doctrine of three formations contains two lines of research that are conjugate: the line of conceptually meaningful historical being and the line of a significantly formalized, schematized logical being. The fact that in historical being appears as an objective trend seen in historical material appears in the sphere of logical being as a “rectified scheme”, organizing the “backbone” of the project itself, which is a guide to the action of the subject, who seeks to determine the objective guidelines for the practical transformation of society. This is the most interesting philosophical and theoretical conceptual and projective moment for us, connected with the teachings of Marx and Engel's (1960b) on three formations.

The subject of a special consideration and special attention should, in our opinion, be the tertiary formation. In our opinion, it can become that conceptual coordinate system that will allow, on the basis of an objective historical study of the specifics of the tertiary formation, a society of free human personality, to build a logical diagram of a social project as the “backbone” of the practical transformation of modern society, as a conceptual criterion for the entire registry of decisions which are accepted for its development. The anthropological and ontological turns taking place in the being of modern man, in our opinion, testify to the actual transition of mankind from pre-history to history itself. The living being of a person reveals a tendency to remove the alienation of the objective world, to appropriate back what appeared to be alien.

In a historical vein, Marx and Engels (1844) understood the tertiary formation as the result of the negation of denial, as the restoration of individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era. The subject world of the “second nature” created by man for man in a tertiary formation is linked to the interests of developing a free human individuality within the framework of associated property, in which the joint property of workers and their individual property are equally significant. At the resulting peak of all the historical processes of the tertiary formation is as a necessary, free human individuality, conscious of responsibility and implementing strict, spiritually conditioned self-regulation. In the historical component of the tertiary formation, as it seems to us, we can quite convincingly see a turn, not without significant contradictions, of the modern world to the living being of man. This is evident in everything: in attempts to solve global problems, problems related to human health, with its food supply in different regions of the world, with its spiritual health, with living conditions and so on. If we keep the strictly traditional manner of categorical expression, then, translating the conversation into the mainstream of logical being as a projective “backbone” of the tertiary formation, we note that in it, in our opinion, the category of use value (value) comes to the fore.

The logic of the primary formation was organized by Marx and Engels (1844) around the category of value, the logic of the secondary formation was organized by him around surplus value. The logic of the tertiary formation, as a projective basis, is built around the category of use value. The removal of the alienated being of the objective world of the "second nature", culture should be expressed in the logic of the reverse absorption of value by use value. Behind use value is a real living individual. It makes up his outwardly objective “unfolding”. Since man is an objective being, so far his objective being is developed in all the objective diversity of the world around him. Alienation means that a person is separated from this subject variety of his essence by things alien to it, money expressing value. The secondary formation knew the times when money as a market element dominated the living being of a person, at the peak of this process, a thing appeared in place of a person, a person appeared in the place of a thing. Such perversions were achieved by alienated identity at the arbitrariness of “untied” value. Submission of money to use value means, strictly speaking, the reverse absorption of value by use value. The process of absorption of use value by value in the primary formation K. Marx presented as the logic of the formation of the form of value. The “form of value" is the most important place in the "Capital" (Marx & Engel's, 1960a). Capital itself could be characterized as a “form of surplus value,” as the logic of a secondary formation.

Our problem is the logic of the tertiary formation, which should be the logic of the mentioned reverse absorption of value by use value. It is clear that in this logical summary of the historical process of the tertiary formation, it is necessary to begin with the form of primary conjugation of value and use value. Useful value in form here gravitates to the abstract universality of the monetary form of value. It is characterized by equalization. In the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844" (Marx & Engel's, 1974), K. Marx mentions this, exploring the development of the idea of communism. It is clear that the further logic of the strikingly universal form of use value is associated with an increase in its originality with the obligatory preservation of the abstractly universal (“communist”) core. This originality of the subsequent forms of use value is the originality of the external objective world, which provides, ultimately, the internal personal spiritual originality (free individuality) of a person. The abstract universality of money (value) provides the individual with freedom in relation to any value in use. At the same time, it is removed by a set of necessary use values aimed at the mandatory maintenance of the living being of individuals. A living person here is constantly "in the picture." Now, the use value is sharpened on the obligatory generic provision of the life of an individual person. At the peak of the ascent according to the forms of use value we have outlined, is the free individuality of the person who is the creator. Its energy potential takes off a creatively organized subject environment. The whole interest in the formation of man within the framework of the form of use value (value) shifts from the objective environment to the internal energy potential of a free human individuality.

As a result of logical analysis, it was revealed that the removal of the alienated being of the objective world of culture should be expressed in the logic of the reverse absorption of value by use value. Behind use value is the real living individual. It makes up his outwardly objective “unfolding”. Since man is an objective being, so far his objective being is developed in all the objective diversity of the world around him. Alienation of the individual in modern society means that a person is separated from this subject variety of his essence by things alien to it, by money expressing a value (Nevelev & Kamaletdinva, 2019; Nevelev, Kamaletdinva, & Bril'c, 2019).

Conclusion

Useful value in form gravitates to the abstract universality of the monetary form of value. It is characterized by equalization. The logic of a strikingly universal form of use value is associated with an increase in its originality with the obligatory preservation of an abstractly universal core. The originality of the subsequent forms of use value is the originality of the external objective world, which provides the internal spiritual originality (free individuality) of a person. The abstract universality of money (value) provides the individual with freedom in relation to any value in use. It is removed by a set of necessary consumer values aimed at the mandatory maintenance of the living being of individuals. A living person here is constantly "in the picture". Now, the use value is sharpened on the obligatory generic provision of the life of an individual person. At the peak of the ascent according to the forms of use value we have outlined, is the free individuality of the person who is the creator. Its energy potential takes off a creatively organized subject environment. The whole interest of the formation of man within the framework of the form of use value (value) shifts from the objective environment to the internal energy potential of a free human individuality.

References

• Marx, K. (1909). Critique of Political Economy. Capital. Chicago, Charles H. Kerr and Co. Publ.
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