Socio-economic systems and property relations. Property and the economic structure of society. §1 Legal relations of property

The word "property" appeared in Russia a very long time ago. It was formed from the old Russian word "sob" - all one's own, personal property, property, wealth.

It may seem that property is the connection of a person with a thing. After all, say, for example, a young man: "This bike is mine."

However, this establishes not only the belonging of some property to a given person. At the same time, it is implied that the bicycle does not belong to anyone else.

Therefore, property is an economic relationship between people who find out which of them owns each thing.

Property is a property relationship that establishes the ownership of material and spiritual goods by some people.

All useful things are divided among themselves by the members of society, who are their owners. Therefore, acquaintance with the economy of each country involves clarifying the question: who owns the land, factories, railways, houses, shops, educational institutions and other types of wealth? A similar question arises for a young specialist who goes to get a job in an institution or enterprise. He is interested: who is the owner here, who will hire him and manage his activities?

To understand these issues, it is important to know how property relations develop between people.

Property is a complex set of economic relations. It includes three types of basic property relations, which allow us to clarify the following questions:

Who (what participants in economic activity) appropriates the factors and results of production?

How are the economic relations associated with the use of property?

Who gets the business income?

Therefore, the totality of economic relations of ownership includes the following components: a) appropriation of factors and results of production, b) economic use of property, c) receipt of income from property.

Assignment is an economic connection between participants in economic activity, which establishes their attitude towards things as if they were their own. Namely, it determines who can and who should not claim certain property.

The opposite of appropriation is the relationship of alienation. They arise if some part of society seizes all the means of production, leaving other people without sources of livelihood, or when products created by some people are appropriated by others. Such was the relationship between slave owners and slaves in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

Often, the owner of the means of production does not himself engage in creative activity, but provides an opportunity for other persons to use his property under certain conditions. Then between the owner and the user there are relations of economic use of property.

An example of a relationship for the use of someone else's property is a lease - an agreement on the provision of the property of a person for temporary use to another person for a certain fee. A similar picture is observed with a concession - an agreement under which the state leases industrial enterprises or plots of land to private individuals, foreign firms for a certain period.

When a lot of people are involved in the work of an enterprise, a relationship arises between them related to generating income. In this case, the entire amount of income from production activities according to the established amounts goes to each person.

The situation is different if the owner of the means of production does not engage in economic work and leases out his property. The one who is a temporary user receives a certain part of the product, and gives the other, larger part to the owner.

Economic relations of property develop normally and bring income to all citizens of society under the following indispensable condition. They must be formed on the basis of a recognized binding order, which is provided for by legal laws and rules of economic conduct.

Economic ties between people are formalized legally and fixed in law.

Law is a set of obligatory rules of conduct (norms). They are established in society or approved by the state and supported by it.

When determining property in the legal sense, the subjects of the right of ownership to the objects of their civil rights are identified.

Legally, the subjects of property rights are:

a) a citizen (natural person) - a person as a subject of civil (property and non-property) rights and obligations;

b) legal entity - an organization (association of persons, enterprise, institution), which is the subject of civil rights and obligations. This social (collective) formation enters into economic relations on its own behalf as an independent integral unit. An example is a firm - an economic, industrial or commercial enterprise (association), enjoying the rights of a legal entity;

c) the state and municipalities (bodies of local government and self-government).

The legislation highlights the objects of civil rights. These include:

real estate (land plots, subsoil plots, forests, buildings, structures, etc.);

movable things (money, chain papers, etc., not related to real estate);

intellectual property (the results of intellectual activity and equivalent means of individualization of a legal entity, individualization of products, works or services performed: company name, trademark, service mark, etc.). Ownership of property does not always have a legal basis (law, contract, administrative decision - the decision of state authorities).

Use is the right to productively or personally consume a thing to satisfy one's own needs and interests, depending on its purpose (for example, to use a car to transport people and goods). The owner can transfer his property to other persons for some time and under certain conditions. The boundaries of the right to use are determined by law, contract or other legal basis (for example, a will).

Disposition -- the right to change the assignment (belonging) of property. It is carried out most often by making various transactions (purchase and sale, exchange, donation, etc.).

However, not all persons strive to strictly observe the generally accepted rules of conduct for owners. They violate them for selfish interests by committing criminal (criminal) actions. To combat such offenses, the state approves the Criminal Code (a single set of legal norms applied in criminal acts).

Thus, the new Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, put into effect on January 1, 1997, includes several chapters: Ch. 21 "Crimes against property", Ch. 22 "Crimes in the sphere of economic activity" and Ch. 23 "Crimes against the interests of service in commercial and other organizations" and provides for punishment for crimes in the sphere of the economy, Depending on the severity of the crime and the damage caused to society, the following penalties are provided: a fine, compulsory or corrective labor, confiscation (forced and gratuitous seizure in favor of the state ) property, deprivation of liberty for a certain period and other measures.

The state and law streamline and subordinate to certain rules the behavior of the owners of goods, protect their legal rights.

Property is the basis for the entire system of relations in production, distribution, exchange and consumption.

First of all, property relations are formed in the very process of production of economic goods. After all, the creation of useful things means, in essence, the appropriation of the substance and energy of nature to increase the wealth of society.

As you know, consumer goods cannot be obtained without the expenditure of means of production. Therefore, ownership of the material conditions of creative activity determines to a decisive extent who owns the economic power in society. In turn, the social form in which the workers and the material conditions of their labor are combined depends on this power.

History knows the diversity of such forms of the socio-economic structure of society. For example, in the ancient world, slave owners were the owners of all the means of production and the slaves whom they forcibly forced to work for themselves. In the Middle Ages, the feudal lords - the owners of the land - enserfed the peasants and forced them to work on their estates for a significant part of the time.

Property has a great influence on the distribution of wealth among people. It is known that the owners of enterprises in the distribution of manufactured products receive such a part of its value that many times exceeds the earnings of workers.

Property relations directly determine the conditions of market exchange. The seller (owner of goods) and the buyer (owner of money) are materially interested in making an equivalent exchange of goods for money without losing part of their property.

It hardly needs to be proved that the well-being of households, measured primarily by the level of consumption of all life's goods, depends on property, which brings a corresponding income to the family.

Property covers the entire process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods. Socio-economic relations in society depend on the appropriation of the decisive means of production.

Meanwhile, property relations tend to change under the influence of a number of reasons - the development of production, its technology and organization, as well as socio-political conditions. Therefore, throughout economic history, several types (homogeneous groups with common characteristics) and specific (diverse) types of appropriation of property corresponding to them have arisen. Further study of the economy involves the clarification of the current diversity of types and types of property.

3.1. Property and socio-economic relations

In the previous chapter of the textbook, we found out why and how the wealth of society is created. Now we have to find the answer to perhaps the main question: who owns all natural and economic benefits?

What is property

The word "property" appeared in Russia a very long time ago. It was formed from the old Russian word "sob" - all one's own, personal property, property, wealth. It may seem that property is the connection of a person with some thing. After all, for example, a young man says: “This bike is mine.”

However, this establishes not only the belonging of some property to a given person. At the same time, it is implied that the bicycle does not belong to anyone else. Therefore, property is an economic relationship between people who find out which of them owns each thing.<.p>Property is a property relationship that establishes the belonging of material and spiritual goods to some people.

To understand these issues, it is important to know how property relations develop between people.

What are the economic relations of ownership

Own is a complex set of economic relations. It includes three types of basic property relations, which allow us to clarify the following questions:
1. Who (what participants in economic activity) assigns the factors and results of production?
2. How are the economic relations associated with the use of property?
3. Who gets the income from business activities?
Therefore, the totality of economic relations of ownership includes the following components: a) appropriation of factors and results of production, b) economic use of property, c) income from property (Fig. 3.4).

Assignment- an economic connection between participants in economic activity, which establishes their attitude to things as if they were their own. Namely, it determines who can and who should not claim certain property.

The opposite of appropriation is the relationship of alienation. They arise if some part of society seizes all the means of production, leaving other people without sources of subsistence, or when products created by some people are appropriated by others. Such was the relationship between slave owners and slaves in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

Rice. 3.2. The totality of economic relations of ownership

An example of a relationship for the use of someone else's property is a lease - an agreement on the provision of a person's property for temporary use to another person for a certain fee. A similar picture is observed with a concession - an agreement under which the state leases industrial enterprises or land plots to private individuals, foreign firms for a certain period.

§1 Legal relations of property

Economic ties between people are formalized legally and fixed in law.

Right is a set of generally binding rules of conduct (norms). They are established in society or approved by the state and supported by it.
Rice. 3.3. The set of powers of the owner

After the state legislates the property relations between these persons, they are vested with the right of ownership. This right includes the owner's authority to own, use and dispose of property (Fig. 3.3).

Ownership is the physical possession of a thing. This right of the owner is protected by law. Ownership of property always has a legal basis (law, contract, administrative decision - the decision of public authorities).

Use- this is the right to productively or personally consume a thing to satisfy one's own needs and interests, depending on its purpose (for example, to use a car to transport people and goods). The owner can transfer his property to other persons for some time and under certain conditions. The boundaries of the right to use are determined by law, contract or other legal basis (for example, a will).

Disposition– the right to change the assignment (belonging) of property. It is carried out most often by making various transactions (purchase, sale, exchange, donation, etc.).

The state and law streamline and subordinate to certain rules the behavior of the owners of goods, protect their legal rights.

How socio-economic relations are related to property Property is the basis for the entire system of relations in production, distribution, exchange and consumption.

History knows the diversity of such forms of the socio-economic structure of society. For example, in the ancient world, slave owners were the owners of all the means of production and the slaves whom they forcibly forced to work for themselves. In the Middle Ages, the feudal lords - the owners of the land - enslaved the peasants and forced them to work on their estates for a significant part of the time.

The legendary poet of ancient Greece, Homer, wrote about the merciless treatment of slaves, who were wholly owned by slave owners:
The slave is negligent; do not force the lord with strict behavior
To his cause, he himself will not take up the work willingly:
The painful lot of sad slavery having chosen a man,
Zeus destroys the best valor in him.

Property covers the entire process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of goods. Social and economic relations in society depend on the appropriation of the decisive means of production.

§2 Types and types of property

Currently, in our country, property is divided into three types in accordance with the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (adopted in 1994). It recognizes private property (Article 212) and two types of common property (Article 244): shared and joint.

We will consider these types of appropriation in this order: from individual to collective and then to general appropriation of property.

Private property of the first type is owned by individuals - peasants, artisans and other people who live by their labor. In this case, the worker gets all the fruits of his management and the freedom of the worker from any forms of oppression and enslavement is ensured. When the owner and the worker are combined in one person, there arises a deep material interest in working for personal benefit.

The second type of private property is owned by persons who set up comparatively large farms employing the labor of many workers. In such an economy, the means of production and the fruits of labor are alienated from the workers. The second type of private property belonged in the distant past to slave owners and landowners, and now to small businessmen.

Since in privately-owned farms of the second type there is an alienation of workers from the means of production, two socio-economic methods of combining factors of production are used here:
non-economic (violent) coercion (slavery, serfdom);
economic attraction of workers who do not have the means of production to work (for material remuneration).
In the transition to the industrial stage of production, small individual farms began to give way to large enterprises in the economic space. At the same time, the methods of involving people who do not have the means of production in labor have finally changed: various forms of people's material interest in increasing the quantity and quality of creative activity have become established. All this was connected with the emergence and development of a new type of property.

General equity assignment: what are its features

The general share assignment has the following distinguishing features.
1. It is formed by combining the contributions made by all participants in the enterprise to the common property.
2. Common shared property is used for collective purposes and under a single management. At the same time, as a rule, a certain participation of owners in the management of socialized property is envisaged.
The final results of the economic activity of the enterprise are distributed according to the share of the property of each.

Participants in all types of collective appropriation are endowed with appropriate rights and obligations and act in accordance with the rules specified in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (Chapter 16, Articles 244–252).

A business partnership is a commercial organization (a legal entity pursuing making profit as the main goal of its activity) with an authorized (share) capital divided into shares (contributions) of participants. The property created at the expense of the contributions of the founders, as well as produced and acquired by the economic partnership in the course of its activity, belongs to it by the right of ownership.

Joint-Stock Company has an authorized capital, which is divided into a certain number of shares. Shares are securities that certify the investment of capital in a joint-stock company and guarantee the receipt of a part of its profit in the form of a dividend (income).

Production cooperative(artel) - a voluntary association of citizens on the basis of membership for joint production or other economic activities (production, processing, marketing of industrial, agricultural and other products, performance of work, trade, consumer services, provision of other services). Such activities are based on the personal labor and other participation of members of the cooperative and on the combination of property shares by its participants.

Business associations– voluntary association of legal entities: business partnerships and companies, production cooperatives, state and other enterprises. Such associations can be created, for example, in the form of associations, where legal entities unite to achieve common economic, scientific, technical, commercial and other goals. Members of the association retain their independence. The property of associations consists of entrance fees of its members, income from their own activities, loans, etc. As a rule, an association is headed by a board of founders, which elects a president (chairman) and forms a board (management) designed to resolve the main issues during the period between meetings of founders.

A joint venture is an enterprise, as a rule, created on the basis of an investment of capital by domestic and foreign participants. It coordinates economic activities, management and distribution of profits.

Much larger types of economic associations and the inseparability of appropriation have been developed in the following type of ownership.

What is included in joint property relations

The general joint assignment has the following characteristics. All people united in a common collective regard the means of production and other goods as jointly and indivisibly belonging to them. Initially, the share of property owned by each owner is not determined. The total income from the agreed economic activity is distributed among its participants either in equal shares, or depending on the labor contribution of each.

Participants in joint appropriation are endowed with rights and obligations, which, according to the Civil Code (Chapter 16, Articles 244, 253-259), determine the rules of their economic conduct.

What is the common joint appropriation, everyone, perhaps, knows on the example of family property, which is in jointly acquired property. It may include a residential building (or apartment), a dacha (or a garden house), plantings on a land plot, household items and other property. If the family runs a labor economy, then it can, say, open a workshop or other small enterprise, purchase machinery, equipment, vehicles, raw materials, materials and other property necessary for joint management.

However, things of individual use that belonged to each of the spouses before marriage, as well as received by one of the spouses during marriage as a gift or by inheritance, are in his property.

Many people are well aware of this type of joint ownership, which is the property of a peasant (farm) economy. This property includes a land plot, plantings, utility and other buildings, productive and working livestock, poultry, agricultural and other machinery and equipment, vehicles and other property acquired for the farm at the common expense of its members. The fruits, products and incomes of joint management are the common property of the members of the peasant economy and are used by agreement between them.

From all types of appropriation, state and municipal (belonging to a local self-government body) property are decisively different. This difference concerns, first of all, the much wider scale of appropriation of property, the role in the management and development of the national economy.

According to the Civil Code (Article 214), state property in Russia is property owned by: a) the Russian Federation (federal property) and b) constituent entities of the Russian Federation - republics, territories, regions, autonomous districts (property of constituent entities of the Russian Federation).

State-owned property is assigned to state enterprises and institutions for possession, use and disposal on the basis of the right of economic management, which is carried out within the limits specified in the Civil Code (Articles 214, 295).

Municipal property (Article 215 of the Civil Code) is property owned by urban and rural settlements, as well as other municipalities. The property that is in municipal ownership is assigned to enterprises and institutions for possession, use and disposal on the basis of the right of economic management (Articles 294, 295). Knowing the types and specific types of appropriation allows us to consider the difficult question of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of property.

§3 What is the modern structure of ownership in the West

Historical course of change appropriation relations in the capitalist countries can be schematically represented in Table. 3.1.

It may seem to someone that each phase of the development of property successively completely replaces the previous type of appropriation. Let us assume that state property covers the entire national economy. But in the countries of the West there was not and now there are no such extremes in the structure of property relations, in which the entire economy is based on only one type of appropriation. This is explained by the fact that, as we saw in the previous paragraph, forms of property relations have both inherent advantages and disadvantages. This determines the limited measure of economic and social efficiency inherent in each of them.

For example, state property has the greatest ability to invest huge material and monetary resources in such sectors of the economy that work for the long term (theoretical scientific research, education, rocket and space complexes, etc.). However, state-owned enterprises in competition with private and joint-stock companies lose in the speed of meeting the rapidly changing needs of citizens.

It turns out that for the owners of private, joint-stock and state enterprises there is only one way to survive and succeed - to take such a niche (place) in the national economy that best suits their economic capabilities and the needs of society.

The main stages in the development of capitalist property
Table 3.1

Thus, all three known types of appropriation with their various types now coexist simultaneously:
private ownership of the means of production of workers (farm and other individual property);
private capitalist;
common equity (partnerships, corporations);
common joint (state, municipal).
In other words, a completely unusual economy has developed, consisting of several modes (forms of economy). It is they, taken together, that ensure the overall economic and social efficiency of the national economy.

From the beginning of the development of civilization, the economy was based, as a rule, on one type of property, the name of which determined the name of the socio-economic system (for example: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal). Now the question arises: how to designate a modern diversified economy in one word?

In their textbook on economics, professors P. Samuelson and W. Nordhaus indicate two extremes in resource ownership: a) private individuals and firms, and b) the state. “None of the modern societies,” they say, “can be attributed entirely to one of these extremes. Most likely, all countries are societies with a mixed economy…” Samuelson P., Nordhaus V. Economics.

In assessing the long historical transition to a mixed ownership structure, important generalizations can be made.
1. "Pure capitalism" with its sole private appropriation, mainly in the 19th century. exhausted its ability to accelerate human civilization.
2. In the national economy, two types of common property have firmly taken the leading place - joint-stock and state. It was they who became powerful locomotives of scientific, technical and economic progress.
3. State ownership strengthened the ruling system and adapted it to the best use of the highest achievements of material and spiritual culture in the interests of the whole society.
Therefore, the history of the evolution of (slow and gradual) changes in property relations, which led to the overcoming of their extreme states, developed in such a peculiar way. Property relations developed in a completely different way in the 20th century. in Russia.

So, in the last one and a half to two centuries, various types of economic systems have operated in the world: two market systems in which the market economy is the main thing - the market economy of free competition (pure capitalism) and the modern market economy (modern capitalism), as well as two non-market systems - traditional and administrative-command. In addition, the transition of the former socialist countries - Russia, other countries - members of the CIS, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as socialist China and Vietnam - to market relations led to the formation of an economic system of a transitional type.

Consider the characteristic features of the main types of economic systems.
traditional economic system.

At present, the traditional economic system has been preserved in some of the most backward African countries (with the exception of South Africa), some of the countries of the Middle East (Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan), India, the former republics of the USSR (Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan), although its elements remain and in middle-level countries.

The economy is not subject to economic laws, but to traditions, rituals, and religion.

Relationships between people in business are based not on economic gain, but on blood ties. Usually low standard of living of people. Small wages, since the population is illiterate, hence the cheap labor force. Therefore, these countries are sources of cheap labor. The backlog of the scientific and technological revolution. Basically, the development of only agriculture (bananas, coffee and other foodstuffs). A cruel political regime - dictatorship (the power of a small group of people or one person), democracy (the power of the people) is absent. Thus: the countries of the traditional economy are, as a rule, economically backward countries, an influx of raw materials for developed countries, a source of cheap labor, a market for second-rate, obsolete products from developed countries.

Command-planning system (centralized, communist).

Established in 1917 and collapsed in 1991. It had the socialist countries: the USSR (Russia), the countries of Eastern Europe, Poland, Bulgaria, the GDR, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania. In Asia - China, Vietnam, Mongolia. In America, Cuba. Today, only two countries have this system - Cuba, North Korea.

Mixed economic system.

It originated in the second half of the twentieth century. Represents the best features of market and command-planned economic systems. Hence the name "mixed economy".

Signs of a mixed economy:
1. The presence of two forms of ownership that successfully compete with each other. State form of ownership - 30% of national production. Private ownership - 70% of national wealth.
2. Reasonable, competent state intervention in the economy:
- elements of economic planning
- maintenance of state-owned enterprises
- social policy of the state directed against poverty. Effective tax policy.
3. Redistribution of taxes of rich people in favor of the poor.
- antimonopoly policy of the state. A monopoly is the combination of several enterprises into one, to establish dominance and overcome competition, in order to obtain the highest possible profits. Monopolies always lead to a crisis in the economy, so the state strives to pursue an antimonopoly policy.
4. Relatively high standard of living in countries with a mixed economy. Social security of the population.

Ownership is the basis of the economic system. Property relations permeate the entire system of economic relations and accompany a person from the moment of his birth to death. A person has many desires and aspirations, this is the essence of his economic nature, and among the various desires, the desire for material wealth occupies a worthy place. This interest has been developed over the centuries and is embodied in a special human feeling - the feeling of the owner, the owner. Ownership gives rise to a person's confidence in life, prompts him to constantly act for the sake of preserving and rationally using the objects of the surrounding world. And, on the contrary, the removal of a person from things, depriving him of the opportunity to feel like a master gives rise to indifference, indifference, lack of initiative, often - hostility to those things that are perceived as not their own, others.

For any economic system, the defining features are the types and forms of ownership, the nature of property relations. Thus, for the state socialist economic system, the main form was state ownership of the means of production; The market model of the economy is characterized by various forms and relations of ownership, which have equal rights to exist. Property is based on relations between people, reflecting a certain form, a method of appropriation of material goods, especially the form of appropriation of the means of production.

What is property?

Firstly, property is the basis, the foundation of the entire system of social relations. The forms of distribution, exchange, and consumption largely depend on what forms of ownership exist in the state.

Secondly property depends on the property status of various groups, classes, strata of society, the possibility of their access to factors of production.

Thirdly, property is the result of historical development. Its forms change with the changing methods of production. Moreover, the main driving force behind these changes is the development of productive forces.

Thus, the windmill personifies the feudal mode of production, and the steam engine highlights the industrial bourgeoisie (F. Engels).

Fourth, although in each economic system there is some basic form of ownership specific to it, this does not exclude the existence of its other forms, both old ones that have passed from the previous economic system, and new ones that appear with the birth of another economic system.

Fifth, the transition from one form of ownership to another can proceed in an evolutionary way, on the basis of a competitive struggle for survival, the gradual displacement of everything that dies off, and the strengthening of what proves its viability and demand. At the same time, the existing forms of property often change in a revolutionary way, when new forms forcibly assert their dominance. Thus, in the theory of Marxism, the elimination of private ownership of the means of production was considered as the main content of the socialist revolution. In accordance with this theory, in Russia, following the conquest of power in 1917, private property in industry, transport, construction, and trade was abolished. Collectivization in the countryside replaced the individual property of the peasants with cooperative-collective farm (semi-state) property. As a result, the complete dominance of socialist or public property was established.

Even in the days of ancient Rome, in Roman law, property was considered as the right to own, use and dispose of property. If in the economic sense property reflects the real relations between people in the appropriation and economic use of property, then in the legal sense property shows how property relations that have developed in practice are formalized and fixed in the legal norms and laws of the state. Thus, property is a very complex socio-social phenomenon, which is studied from different angles by several social sciences.

Thus, economic theory studies the economic relations between people that arise in the process of appropriation (alienation) by them of various benefits, and jurisprudence studies the legal relations that accompany this process.

LECTURE V. PRODUCTION AND SOCIETY

§ 1. Production as the main feature of a person

There are many differences between humans on the one hand and animals on the other. But at the heart of all of them is one main thing. All animals, without a single exception, only appropriate what nature gives, they only adapt to the environment. People create things that do not exist in nature, they transform the environment. The fundamental difference between people and animals lies in the fact that they produce, are engaged in production. Production is a necessary condition for the existence of people. It is necessary to stop production - and people will die. Only production activity could give rise to reason, thinking. Only production could give rise to society, without which it could not develop. By giving birth to society, production thus turned the animal into a social being, i.e. into a person. An animal is only an organism, only a biological being. Man is an inseparable unity of the body (organism) and spirit, in which the leading role belongs to the spirit, which is a social and only social phenomenon, is a personality. Therefore, the impossibility of understanding the essence of society and man, without considering more or less details of production.

§ 2. Labor and production

Material production is always the unity of two sides: the relationship of people to nature and the relationship of people to each other. If we ignore the relationship of people to each other, then production will appear simply as labor. The simplest definition of labor is human activity with the aim of creating objects that satisfy one or another of his needs, i.e. creation of new consumer values (goods). Labor is the unity of three things.

The first of these is the subject of labor. This is a thing that, in the course of labor activity, undergoes a predetermined change, with the goal of turning it into a use value that a person needs. If a person saws a log, then the log is an object of labor. The subject of labor is also a metal blank, which the turner processes on the machine.

The means of labor (the second moment of labor) is a thing or a complex of things that a person places between himself and the object of labor and with the help of which he produces a predetermined change in the object of labor. If we take the same examples, then in the first of them the means of labor is a saw, in the second - a lathe. Simple means of labor are often also referred to as tools of labor.

There are things that do not themselves affect the object of labor, but without which its transformation would be impossible. Such are the buildings of workshops or factories, lamps, vehicles, etc. They, too, are usually characterized as means of labor. Thus, the means of labor are divided into active and passive. The latter could also be called working conditions. But the distinction between active and passive means of labor is important only in a purely technical sense. In the socio-economic sense, they are one whole, which justifies the use of one single term for their designation.

The difference between objects and means of labor is not absolute, but relative. When the land is plowed and harrowed, then it is the object of labor. But when it was sown, it is already a means of labor. Now it is a thing that a person has placed between himself and the grain, and with the help of which he acts on the grain so that this grain gives rise to a new plant and new grains.

The third moment of labor is labor itself as a conscious, purposeful activity of a person in using the means of labor to make a predetermined change in the object of labor.

Labor is human activity. But as a result of labor things change in the objective world: the object of labor is transformed into a product of labor distinct from this object. Considered from the point of view of its results, labor appears as productive labor, as production in the narrowest sense of the word, and the object of labor and means of labor (including working conditions) as means of production.

The means of production are one of the factors of production; its other factor is labor force. For the process of production to take place, it is necessary to combine the means of labor with labor power.

§3. Social production as a unity of production proper, distribution, exchange and consumption

The products of labor are created for consumption. Production is impossible without consumption, just as consumption is impossible without production. Production and consumption constitute an inseparable unity, in which the leading role belongs to production. Production and consumption are not only related to each other, but in a certain respect they are even identical.

On the one hand, production is at the same time consumption: the consumption of labor power, the object of labor and the means of labor. On the other hand, consumption is at the same time production, namely, the production of labor power. But this identity does not exclude difference. It is always necessary to distinguish between actual production as the creation of material goods and actual consumption as a process other than the creation of material goods. Proper consumption is a process subordinate to production itself, that is, the moment of production, understood in a broad sense.

All things created in the process of production are sooner or later consumed, i.e. disappear. Therefore, they must be produced again and again. The process of production is always a process of reproduction. And this allows you to look at it from a new angle. Each specific individual act of labor may or may not take place, but the production process as a whole cannot fail. If it stops, people will disappear, human society will disappear.

In the process of production, understood in a broad sense, things created in the process of actual production go into consumption. But this transition from proper production to proper consumption never takes place directly. Distribution is always wedged between the first and the second, and in many societies also exchange. Distribution and exchange are also moments of production in the broad sense of the word. Production in the broadest sense is the unity of production proper, distribution, exchange and consumption.

There is an important difference between actual production and consumption on the one hand, and distribution and exchange on the other. Actually production - at least from the outside - is the relationship of man to things. A person with the help of one thing changes another. The same can be said about consumption: it is also a person's attitude to things. A person uses one or another use value to satisfy one or another of his needs.

It is a completely different matter - distribution and exchange. They always represent not only actions with things, but also relationships between people. These relations are called economic, or socio-economic. Another name introduced by K. Marx and F. Engels is production relations.

The use of the adjective "production" in Marxist literature to designate socio-economic relations and the definition of "relations of production" that is often encountered in it as relations in the production process sometimes resulted in a misunderstanding of this term.

People often, and now most often, work together. Workers cooperate their efforts: jointly change the object of labor, or the latter alternately passes from one hand to another, each time being subjected to more and more processing. There is a certain organization of labor and people who organize and coordinate labor activities, etc. All of the above and other connections undoubtedly represent relations in the process of production, are production in the literal sense of the word. But they are not socio-economic and thus productive in the sense of the word that was put into it by K. Marx and F. Engels. These relations do not exist on the scale of the sociohistorical organism as a whole, but only within the economic cells existing in it. They can be changed without changing the type of society. It would be best to call them organizational and labor relations.

Thus, on the one hand, production relations in the literal, everyday sense are not production relations in the Marxian sense. And on the other hand, no one who has not studied political economy can classify production relations in the latter sense as production relations. After all, these are relations of distribution in exchange, which, as it seems to the ordinary person, clearly belong to a different sphere than production. Nevertheless, these relations are certainly productive.

In addition to such a familiar everyday meaning of the word "production" - the direct process of creating things - there is another meaning - production in the broad sense, production as a unity of production, distribution and consumption proper. It is the relations of distribution and exchange, or, what is the same, the socio-economic relations of property, that form the internal structure of the production process in the broad sense of the word. Without production in the broad sense of the word, there is not and cannot be production in the narrow sense, production proper. And the relations of distribution and exchange are the only economic relations. There are no other economic relations besides them.

§ 4. Property and socio-economic (production) relations

To understand the essence of socio-economic relations, it is necessary to pose the question: in what case can a person, and in what case, cannot consume this or that thing? Leaving aside for the moment the details that will be discussed later, we can say in the most general terms that it depends on who owns the thing. If the thing belongs to a given person, then he can consume it, if to another, then he cannot consume it without obtaining the consent of the owner. Before us, therefore, appears the concept of property. Without it, it is impossible to understand either distribution or exchange.

Turning to property relations, it should first of all be emphasized that there are two types of such relations. Their first type, which catches the eye and is widely known, is volitional property relations. In a class society where the state exists, they take on the appearance of legal, legal relations. These relationships are often referred to as property relations. The second type of property relations is economic property relations. These relations are not volitional, but material. They really exist only in relations of distribution and exchange. Economic property relations are not some special type of socio-economic relations that exist along with other types of socio-economic relations. The concepts of economic relations of ownership, socio-economic relations, production relations completely coincide.

Property is not a thing and not a relation of a person to a thing, taken by itself. Property is a relation between people, but one that is manifested in their relation to things. Or - in other words - property is the relation of people to things, but one in which their relations to each other are manifested.

Property is such an attitude of people about things that endows both people and things with special social qualities: makes people owners, and things - their property. Every thing in human society always has this social quality. It is always not only a use value, but necessarily at the same time someone's property (of an individual, a group of individuals, or even society as a whole).

The most important category of the general theory of economics is the concept of a cell of property (co-cell), or an owner cell (owner cell). Such a cell is formed by the owner together with the things belonging to him. Each such cell is separated from others by a boundary - of course, a social one. Things can cross this border, move from one property cell to another. This movement of things is purely social, although, of course, it can be accompanied by their physical movement.

For understanding the socio-economic structure of society, the concepts of use and disposal are of great importance. Economists generally do not use them. These concepts are usually found in the arsenal of lawyers who reveal the concept of property rights through the concepts of the right of possession, the right of use and the right of disposal. Of course, in this formulation, all this applies only to volitional property relations.

But just as, in addition to the right of ownership, there is also property itself, and not only as a volitional, but also as an economic relation, in the same way, in addition to the rights of use and disposal, there are real use and real disposal, and again, not only as volitional relations. but also economic phenomena. But since these concepts are introduced by jurists, it will be necessary to begin consideration with their legal aspect.

The right to use a thing is the right to use it for one's needs, to satisfy one's own needs and interests. And the use itself is the realization of this right. So far, all this does not go beyond volitional relations, moreover, relations to things. But the very concept of law already speaks of what is meant here as a matter of course and the relationship between people. The presence of a person's right to something implies the recognition of this right by the people around him. Use is not a relation only to a thing. It is the attitude of people towards things. Therefore, it must be clearly distinguished from the relationship of a person only to a thing - the consumption of a thing, its use, use.

When a slave, for example, is given a tool, he does not receive it for use. He has no right to it. He receives this tool in order to use it to meet the needs of the slave owner. But if a slave is given a piece of land and the necessary means of labor so that after harvesting he gives part of it to the owner, and keeps the rest for himself, then in this case we are faced not only with use, but also with use. In the latter case, a special cell of use arises with certain boundaries - of course, social ones. And this cell is primarily economic.

In purely theoretical terms, the distinction between the use, use of things and the use of them is valid in relation to all things, including commodities. But although the use of consumer goods and the use of them are in principle not the same thing, for in the first case we are dealing only with a relation to things, and in the second - with a relation not only to things, but with a relation between people - in reality they are inseparable from each other. The consumption of consumer goods is always their use for one's own needs, i.e. and use them at the same time. On the other hand, the use of consumer goods can manifest itself only in their use, use.

The right of disposal is first of all the right to alienate a thing, the right to transfer it from one cell of ownership to another. In addition to the exchange, the order is also manifested in the distribution. And distribution and exchange are primarily economic phenomena, although not only. Each act of exchange in a class society also always acts as a legal act - a transaction.

In general, economic property relations do not exist without volitional property relations, just as volitional ones do not exist without economic ones. Property as an economic relation and property as a volitional relation are impossible without each other. Property as an economic relation is always embodied in property relations.

The property relations normally include the relations of disposal and use as their moments. But under certain conditions, a splitting of property is possible, and thus a separate existence of relations of ownership, disposal and use. One person may be the owner of a thing, and another only its manager and user, but not the owner. Another option is that a person is only a user of a thing, but not its owner and not even a manager. And there may be several such options.

We encounter property in the fullest and most precise sense of the word when the owner, manager, and user completely coincide. When a person is only a manager and user, but not an owner, we have before us a peculiar form of people's relations about things, which can be characterized as sub-property. If a person is only a user, but not a manager and, moreover, not an owner, we are dealing with a sub-ownership.

Thus, along with the cells of ownership, there can be cells of disposal and use and cells of only use. An example of a use cell that is not a property cell has already been given: a slave can be a user of the means of production, including land, but the slave owner remains the manager and owner.

Cells of property, disposal and use are peculiar nodes not only in the system of volitional (in a class society - legal) property relations, but above all in the system of economic relations. It is within these cells and between these cells that distribution and exchange takes place. Only the introduction of the concepts of disposal and use make it possible to understand the essence of the relations of distribution and exchange.

Distribution is the leaving of a social product in the ownership, disposal or use of certain people or/and its transfer to the ownership, disposal or use of other people, the result of which (i.e. abandonment and/or transfer) is the receipt by each member of society of a certain share of this product. Exchange is the transfer of things from the property of some persons to the property of others (from one cell of property to another), compensated by the counter movement of material values or their signs (paper money, for example).

As already noted, every product of labor is always a use value and property. Any things are created simultaneously as a use value and someone's property. Therefore, the process of actually producing things is always at the same time the process of things coming into someone's property, i.e. distribution process.

Thus, property relations are manifested not only in the processes of actual distribution and exchange, but also in the process of actual production. Being present in the actual process of production, property relations make production in the narrowest sense of the word a relation of people not only to nature, but also to each other, i.e. public attitude.

The distribution considered above is the primary distribution. This is the distribution of everything created in the production process - both the means of production and consumer goods. When the entire social product, or at least part of it, is created by workers as someone else's property, the process of actual production is at the same time the process of exploitation of man by man. Production, socio-economic relations are at the same time antagonistic.

After the primary distribution, in most cases, the actual distribution takes place as a special process, different from the actual production process. The slave receives maintenance - food, clothing, the slave owner - income. The capitalist receives a profit, the worker - wages. This is a secondary distribution.

In those societies where, as a result of secondary distribution, only a part of the members of society receives a share of the social product (in societies without private property - workers, in societies with private property - owners of the means of production and workers), there is also a tertiary distribution. This distribution, in contrast to the primary and secondary ones, occurs not within the boundaries of the entire sociohistorical organism, but within the framework of special cells existing within the socior. Most of the time, these are families. The relations of tertiary distribution are relations, although economic, but not socio-economic, not production. Therefore, they are not studied by political economy. These are private-economic relations.

The tertiary distribution always takes place according to need, according to need. Such was the secondary distribution in early primitive society. In late primitive society, distribution according to work arose. It was replaced by property distribution, so characteristic of a class society.

In class societies, the primary distribution of the created product is based on the distribution of the means of production, which already existed at the beginning of the production cycle. The distribution of the means of production used determines the distribution of the newly created means of production. Thus, production itself is the reproduction not only of things, but also of the socio-economic relations within which such reproduction is carried out. In the same societies, the property relations for both factors of production, i.e. on the means of production and labor power, determine the secondary distribution.

Therefore, in all class societies, relations in the distribution of the means of production, or, what is the same, relations of ownership of the means of production, formed a special subsystem within the system of production relations, which played the role of a determinant in relation to all other socio-economic ties. It is these and only these relations that very often in Marxist literature were defined as relations in the process of production - production and contrasted them with distribution and exchange relations. Such a contrast is completely erroneous: relations of production and relations of distribution and exchange are one and the same.

Another mistake was that such a structure of the system of socio-economic relations was considered as universal, inherent in all societies without exception. In reality, for example, in early primitive society, the relations of ownership of the means of production did not form a special subsystem and did not determine the nature of other socio-economic relations.

Ideally, after the distribution, as a result of which each member of society receives the ownership, disposal or use of the share of the social product due to him, there should come the consumption of this product. Since the product is disappearing, it must be reproduced. The process of production, as we remember, is a process of constant reproduction. In some societies, indeed, production, distribution, and consumption proper exhaust all actions with the social product. In such societies, no other socio-economic relations, except for distribution relations, which are at the same time economic relations of property, do not exist.

However, in most societies, these activities are supplemented by exchange and, accordingly, exchange relations, which can take on a variety of forms. Contrary to the opinion of a significant number of economists, barter is just one of many forms of exchange. In addition to the exchange of goods, there was an exchange of gifts (gift exchange), help (help exchange), etc. Relations of exchange can exist side by side with relations of distribution, forming a special sphere distinct from the sphere of distribution. But under capitalism, for example, distribution takes place in the form of exchange. The receipt of wages by the worker is an act of distribution. But it also represents the final moment of the act of exchange between the capitalist and the worker.

In many societies, along with distribution and exchange, there is also redistribution, which takes on a variety of forms. The relations of redistribution included in the system of socio-economic relations of a particular society include certain forms and methods of exploitation, payment for various kinds of personal services, and so on. As for taxes, they play a different role in different societies: in sociohistorical organisms of the same type, they belong to the number of distribution relations (an example is rent-tax in societies with an Asian mode of production), in others - to redistribution relations (for example, taxes under classical capitalism).

§ 5. Type of socio-economic relations, socio-economic structure, mode of production, basis and superstructure, socio-economic formations and paraformations

As is clear from what has been said above, there are several qualitatively different types of socio-economic relations. Some of them have already been mentioned: early primitive, late primitive, slaveholding, capitalist. Ideally, socio-economic relations of one type or another form an integral system - a socio-economic (socio-economic) structure.

Each system of socio-economic relations of one specific type (socio-economic structure) is an internal structure of the production process, a special social form in which the process of creating material wealth is carried out. The production of material goods always takes place in a certain social form.

Production, taken not in general, but in a specific social form, is nothing but a specific mode of production. Thus, a mode of production is a type of production, singled out on the basis of its social form. There are as many modes of production as there are socio-economic structures. Socio-economic structures and, accordingly, methods of production are divided into basic and non-basic. The main modes of production are those socio-economic types of production that are at the same time stages in the world-historical development of social production.

The peculiarity of socio-economic relations lies in the fact that, unlike all other social relations, they do not depend on the consciousness and will of people. Existing independently of the consciousness and will of people, they determine their will and consciousness. Socio-economic ties are objective relations and, in this sense, material.

Therefore, the system of these relations, being the social form in which production takes place, is at the same time the foundation of any sociohistorical organism. It determines the social consciousness and the will of the people living in it, and thus all other social relations existing in it. Unlike socio-economic ties, which are material in nature, all other social ties are volitional relations. Public consciousness, together with strong-willed social relations, is a superstructure over the socio-economic basis.

Since socio-economic relations constitute the basis, the foundation of any society, it is quite natural to base the classification of sociohistorical organisms on the type of production relations that dominate them. The type of society identified on this basis is usually called a socio-economic formation. But not every socio-economic type of society can be called a socio-economic formation, but only one that is at the same time a stage of world-historical development. There are as many socio-economic formations as there are basic socio-economic structures and, accordingly, the main methods of production.

In addition to socio-economic formations, there are also such socio-economic types of society that do not represent stages in the development of human society as a whole. If they turn out to be stages of development, then only those or other individual societies. These types of society, which are peculiar additions to socio-economic formations, can be called socio-economic paraformations (from the Greek para - near, at).

§ 6. Socio-economic structure of society, socio-economic structures and sub-structures, single and multi-structure societies

In principle, such sociohistorical organisms are quite possible and actually existed in which all socioeconomic relations belonged to the same type. This was the case in the early stages of the development of human society. But in later epochs, in sociohistorical organisms, socioeconomic ties often existed simultaneously, belonging not to one, but to several different types. And this makes it necessary to introduce a new concept - the socio-economic structure of society. The socio-economic structure of a socio-historical organism is a system of all socio-economic (production) relations existing in it.

In the literature, the system of socio-economic relations that exists in a sociohistorical organism is most often called the economy of society or simply the economy. But along with this meaning, the word "economy" has another. They can designate social production in the unity of all its aspects, including productive forces, etc. However, in this broader sense, the term "economy" is more often used.

When in a socio-historical organism all socio-economic relations belong to one type, the concept of its socio-economic structure of society coincides with the concept of a certain socio-economic structure. (production) relations. But when socio-economic relations in a sociohistorical organism belong to different types, there is no such coincidence.

Different socio-economic relations can exist in a sociohistorical organism in different ways. Relations of a particular type can form an integral system in society - a socio-economic structure, or they can exist in it as an appendage to existing structures - a socio-economic sub-structure. When production is carried out in the shell not of a mode, but of a socio-economic sub-structure, we have before us not a method, but only one or another mode of production. It is very important to distinguish the structured existence of socio-economic relations from their unsettled existence.

As you know, wage labor was characteristic of capitalism. But wage labor occurs in the most diverse epochs of world history: in pre-class societies, in the Ancient East, in the ancient world, which gave grounds to some historians and economists to talk about the existence of capitalism there. In fact, there was no capitalism in any of these societies. Nowhere did wage labor relations form a system. Everywhere they existed in the form of a subclade, i.e. in an awkward form.

When socio-economic relations of only one type exist in a socio-historical organism, then society is one-way. They are one-way even when in it, along with the only way, there is one or even several sub-lines. But in a sociohistorical organism, several socio-economic structures can simultaneously exist, not to mention sub-structures. Such a society is multifaceted.

Usually in such a society, one of the structures existing in it is dominant, dominant, while the rest are subordinate. The dominant way of life determines the nature of the socio-economic structure of society as a whole, and thus the type of society, its formation or paraformation affiliation. The distinction between dominant and subordinate orders is in many cases relative. In the process of historical development, one or another dominant way of life can become subordinate, and the subordinate can become dominant.

However, not every subordinate order can become dominant. And here we are faced with a different classification of ways. They are divided into those that, in principle, can be dominant, and those that can never become dominant. The first ways can be called core, the second - additional. Core structures can be the only ones in society or dominant in it and, accordingly, determine the type of society, its belonging to one or another socio-economic formation or paraformation.

As an example of an additional socio-economic structure, one can cite the farms that exist under capitalism, the owners of which combine the owner of the means of production and the direct producer. This way of life is usually called petty-bourgeois. Various ways of small-scale independent production also existed in pre-capitalist class societies, in particular in ancient ones.

§ 7. The structure of the socio-economic structure

The socio-economic structure of a society either coincides (completely or mainly) with any socio-economic structure, or consists of several structures. This makes it necessary to more or less analyze the structure of the socio-economic structure. To do this, it is necessary to refer to the concept of a property cell already introduced above.

When the property cell includes the means of production, it is a production unit: a social product is created in it. Such a cell of ownership can be called an economic, or economic, cell (owner's cell, or economy cell). An economy cell may coincide with a sociohistorical organism. In this case, it is also an economic (economic) organism (economic organism, or economic organism), i.e. such an economic entity that, in principle, can exist and function independently of other similar entities. If, at the same time, all members of the sociohistorical organism taken together are the owners of the means of production and consumer goods, we have before us public property in its purest form.

When an economic cell does not coincide with a sociohistorical organism, this means that the given socior includes not one, but several economic cells. In this case, the economic organism is an association of economic cells, which may or may not coincide with the sociohistorical organism. If in the economic cell, which, along with several other such units, is included in the socior, there is no exploitation of man by man, it can be called a cell of isolated (special) property. Separate (special) property can be personal, when the owner is one person, and group, when several people jointly own the means of production. If in the economic cell the process of production is at the same time the process of exploitation, we have before us the cell of private property.

Another option: the property cell includes only consumer goods, but not the means of production. Social production cannot take place in such a cell: tertiary distribution and consumption take place in it. If the economy is kept in it, then only at home (cooking food for the personal needs of its members, etc.). These cells usually include not only the owners of consumer goods, but also people who are dependent on them. These ownership cells can be called dependent or dependent-consumer. The property associated with them is often called personal, which is not very accurate, because it can be not only personal, but also group. The best name for it is a separate property.

A frequent case is the coincidence of an economic cell with a dependent-consumer cell. Especially often they coincide with dependent-consumer cells of separate property. There is no separate property. There is only separate ownership both of the means of production and of consumer goods.

The difference between the socio-economic sub-structure and the structure is that the sub-structure does not have its own host cells; economic relations specific to him exist within the framework of foreign economic cells. Each socio-economic structure, whether core or additional, has its own economic cells. Each core socio-economic order is also characterized by the existence of its own economic organism. As for the additional structures, they do not have their own economic organisms. Their economic cells are interspersed in the composition of the economic organism of one of the core structures that exist along with it, most often the dominant one. Thus, for example, under capitalism cells of small-scale independent production enter the system of the national capitalist market.

§ 8. The productive forces of society

As already mentioned, socio-economic, or production relations, are objective relations and, in this sense, material. They not only do not depend on the consciousness and will of people, but, on the contrary, determine their consciousness and will. And naturally the question arises of what they depend on, what is the factor that determines the nature of these relations? Why in one epoch or another there exists exactly one and not another socio-economic order, and why some systems of socio-economic relations, and thus also modes of production, are replaced in world history by others.

As has already been pointed out, the relations of distribution and exchange, which in their essence are relations of property, form the internal structure of production, the social form in which the process of production proper takes place. Actually, production is the process of creating a social product by certain forces, which are usually called the productive forces of society. These forces are people armed with the means of labor and able to set them in motion. Social production is the functioning of the productive forces of society, always taking place in a historically determined social form. The functioning of the productive forces is the content of social production, the system of socio-economic relations is the form in which this content is clothed. And, as everywhere in the world, the content determines the form.

The productive forces of society may be greater or lesser. They may grow or they may shrink. This gives grounds to introduce the concept of the level of development of the productive forces of society. It is the level of development of the productive forces of society that is the main factor determining the type of social and economic relations existing in society. Another factor is the internal structure of the productive forces. The level of development of the productive forces of a given sociohistorical organism is measured by the volume of the social product created in it per capita of its population. This indicator can be designated as the productivity of social production.

The productivity of social production, of course, depends on the technology used in production and on other factors that have arisen in the process of social development. But not only from them. It also depends on the natural conditions in which the process of social production takes place. When people are engaged in gathering, hunting and fishing, the amount of product they get is determined not only by the technique and time spent on work, but also by how rich natural resources are. With the same level of technology, but in different natural conditions, the productivity of social production can be different.

Natural resources can be used not only as objects of labor. Land, for example, in agriculture acts not only as an object of labor, but also as a means of labor. Thus, it becomes an element of the productive forces. The transformation of land into a means of labor and its inclusion in the productive forces was the result of historical development. The use of land as a means of labor is undoubtedly an indicator of the development of the productive forces.

But the natural fertility of the earth is a gift of nature. And the productivity of agricultural production largely depends on this gift. With the same agricultural technique, the same farming systems, with the same amount of time spent on labor, the productivity of social production in a society with fertile soil can be much higher than in a society where natural conditions are worse. But it's not just about the natural fertility of the land. In some regions, the soil is easily cultivated, in others it requires more effort and much more time. The productivity of social production also depends on the climate. There are regions (tropics and subtropics) in which agricultural work is possible all year round, where two or even three crops are collected during this period of time. In other regions (temperate zone), agricultural activity is limited to a certain season: there it is impossible to get more than one crop per year.

Therefore, it is imperative to distinguish two main components in the productivity of social production. One of them is the result of social, historical development. The other is a gift of nature. The first I will call social (or social) productivity, the second - natural productivity, and their inseparable unity - the total productivity of social production. Accordingly, it is necessary to distinguish between the social level of development of the productive forces and the total level, or state, of the productive forces.

Pre-capitalist societies are characterized by a larger or smaller gap between the social level of development of the productive forces and their total level (state). With the transition to an industrial society, this gap is narrowing and may even disappear altogether. In this case, one can simply speak about the level of development of the productive forces without any clarifications.

The founders of historical materialism have statements that give reason to believe that they were approaching a distinction between the natural and social levels of development of productive forces, but we do not find any clear formulations in them. And this is understandable - the classics of Marxism primarily proceeded from data relating to capitalist society.

When one speaks of the progress of the productive forces of society, one is talking, of course, about the growth of the social productivity of production. It is striking that the social productivity of social production can be increased by increasing labor productivity. In turn, the growth of labor productivity can be ensured by acquiring more experience and qualifications by workers, increasing the intensity of their work, introducing more advanced methods of using technology, and improving the organization of labor. But all these methods sooner or later exhaust their possibilities.

The only way that can ensure an unlimited growth of labor productivity is the progress of technology. It is precisely in this direction that the development of production has been going on since the birth of capitalism. For a long time this method of increasing the productivity of social production was regarded as the only possible one. Connected with this is the identification of the evolution of the productive forces of society with the progress of technology and, accordingly, the level of development of productive forces with the degree of development of technology.

We find such an identification among the founders of the materialistic understanding of history. “Acquiring new productive forces,” wrote K. Marx, “people change their mode of production, and with a change in the mode of production, the way they provide for their life, they change all their social relations. A hand mill gives us a society with an overlord at the head, a steam mill - a society with an industrial capitalist. "The tools of the savage," F. Engels echoed him, "determine his society to exactly the same extent as the newest tools - capitalist society."

Undoubtedly, the quality of a person as a productive force depends to a large extent on the technology he uses. But not only from her. The social level of development of the productive forces is never reduced to a technical level. There are other, besides technology, social factors on which the degree of a person's ability to create a social product depends.

And the most important among them is the existing system of socio-economic relations. With the same technical equipment, but with different socio-economic relations, people can create far from the same amount of social product. Not only the productive forces influence the relations of production, but the relations of production influence the productive forces. This and other non-technical factors can be combined under the general name of the social and humanitarian factor. Thus, in the social productivity of social production, it is also necessary to distinguish between two components: technical and socio-humanitarian.

By the way, there is often a simplified view of the production technique. It is often reduced to tools and machines. But technology in a broader sense also includes farming systems, and horse harness, etc. The technical level of development of the productive forces is characterized not only by gun (gun-machine) technology, but also by non-gun technology. One can give an example of the enormous importance of non-gun technology. In ancient Rome, a pair of horses could pull a load that did not exceed 500 kg; in medieval Europe, the same pair pulled a load of 2500 kg, i.e. 5 times more. This was a consequence of the introduction in the VIII century. AD new horse harness borrowed from the nomads of the Eurasian steppes. As a result, it became possible to use horses instead of bulls in agriculture, which contributed to a significant rise in this branch of the social economy.

Due to the fact that the quality of a person as a productive force depends not only on technology, but also on other social factors, in addition to the technical (technological) method of increasing the productivity of social production, there are others. One of them is to increase the productivity of social production by increasing the length of working time. This is a temporal (from lat. tempus - time) way to increase the productivity of social production .. The other is demographic. It consists in increasing the proportion of workers in the composition of people who form a sociohistorical organism. And without taking them into account, it is absolutely impossible to understand the change in the modes of production in world history.

The progress of the productive forces underlies the development of production, and thus of society. Therefore, one of the most important problems is the question of the source of development of the productive forces. Sometimes it is sought outside of production - in the characteristics of the geographical environment, in population growth, and so on. In reality, the source of the development of the productive forces lies in production itself. The stimulus for the development of productive enterprises lies in the existing socio-economic (production) relations.

This is especially evident in the example of the capitalist mode of production. Here the source of the development of the productive forces is quite clear: the desire of the capitalist to extract the maximum possible profit. Capitalist production is production for the sake of profit. And the desire to cure surplus value does not stem from any kind of eternal human nature. It is generated by the existing system of economic relations. Essentially, this was shown by economists even before Marx. The latter only deeply developed and substantiated this view. When theories of economies other than capitalist were created, it became clear that socio-economic relations are the source of the development of productive forces at all stages of the historical evolution of mankind.

Thus, at all stages of the development of human society, there was one and at the same time different sources of development of productive forces. One source, because in all modes of production, socio-economic relations were the incentive for the development of productive forces, and different sources, because qualitatively different systems of socio-economic relations were inherent in different modes of production. At all stages of the development of the human economy, the only incentives for the development of productive forces were relations of production, but since these relations were different at different stages, then, accordingly, the incentives for the development of productive forces were not the same.

But at all stages of development, excluding, as some researchers argue, the capitalist stage, socio-economic relations sooner or later ceased to stimulate the development of productive forces, moreover, they became an obstacle to their further progress or even led to their degradation and destruction. Then there was an urgent need to replace the old socio-economic relations that had exhausted their possibility with new ones. The emergence of new socio-economic relations made possible a further breakthrough in the development of the productive forces of mankind.

Property is one of those concepts around which the best minds of mankind have crossed for many centuries. However, the matter is not limited to the struggle in theoretical terms. Social upheavals, from which the whole world sometimes shudders, are ultimately caused by attempts to change the existing property relations, to establish a new system of these relations. In some cases these attempts have been successful, in others they have failed. It happened that the society really moved to a new, higher level of its development. But it happened that, as a result of the breakdown of property relations, society was thrown far back and fell into a quagmire from which it did not know how to get out. In our country during the twentieth century there was a breakdown of property relations twice. The first began in October 1917 and ended in an unprecedented catastrophe, the consequences of which will be assessed from geometrically opposite positions for more than one generation. The second is happening today. Its main goal is to return property relations to their true content, to put together a sufficiently wide layer of private owners who would become the social support of the current regime.

So what is property? In the simplest way, property can be defined as the attitude of one person (collective) to the thing belonging to him (them), as to his own. Ownership rests on the distinction between "mine" and "yours." From this point of view, any form of ownership is private, no matter what ideological tinsel, pursuing quite prosaic goals, it may be covered up.

From the elementary definition of property, which is given, it follows that property is the relation of a person to a thing. This, however, is not the content of ownership. Since property is inconceivable without other persons who are not the owners of the given thing to treat it as someone else's, property means the relationship between people about things. On one pole of this relationship stands the owner, who treats the thing as in his own, on the other - non-owners, i.e. all third parties who are obliged to treat it as a stranger. This means that third parties are obliged to refrain from any encroachment on someone else's thing, and, consequently, on the will of the owner, which is embodied in this thing. It follows from the definition of property that it has a material substratum in the form. A volitional content is also inherent in property, since it is the sovereign will of the owner that determines the existence of the thing belonging to him.

Property is a social relation. Without the relation of other persons to the thing belonging to the owner as to someone else's, there would be no relation to it by the owner himself as to his own. The content of property as a social relation is revealed through those connections and relations that the owner must enter into with other people in the process of production, distribution, exchange and consumption of material goods. Thus, property is a social relation that has a material substrate and volitional content. Property is a property relation, and in a number of property relations it occupies a dominant place. This, however, is not enough to characterize the property. It is necessary to show in what specific forms the volitional acts of the owner in relation to the thing belonging to him can be expressed. Of course, we are not talking about lining up a list of such acts. This is impossible, because, in principle, the owner can do everything in relation to his thing that is not prohibited by law or does not contradict the social nature of property. The will of the owner in relation to the thing belonging to him is expressed in the possession, use and disposal of it.

Ultimately, the specific acts of the owner in relation to the thing are reduced to them.

Possession means the economic domination of the owner over the thing. Ownership expresses the statistics of property relations, the attachment of things to individuals and collectives.

Use means extracting useful properties from a thing through its productive and personal consumption.

The order means the commission of acts in relation to a thing that determine its fate, up to the destruction of the thing. This is the alienation of a thing, and its leasing, and a pledge of a thing, and much more. The dynamics of property relations is already expressed in use and disposal.

In view of what has been said, let us concretize the definition of property given earlier. Property is the attitude of a person to a thing belonging to him as to his own, which is expressed in the possession, use and disposal of it, as well as in the elimination of the interference of all third parties in the sphere of economic domination to which the power of the owner extends. In socio-economic literature, in including the legal one, there is a widespread definition of property as the appropriation by an individual or a collective of the means and products of production within and through a certain social form, or as the social form itself, through which the appropriation is made. The definition of property using the category of appropriation goes back to the works of K. Marx, in which the categories of property and appropriation are indeed linked with each other. This connection can be traced with particular relief in the introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. Such an approach to the definition of ownership is, in principle, possible. However, it should be taken into account that the concept of appropriation needs to be specified, and therefore can hardly be used to reveal the content of property without defining it itself. In addition, researchers, including K. Marx, put different content into the concept of appropriation. From this point of view, possession, use and disposal, as more specific economic categories, have undeniable advantages over the extremely abstract category of appropriation. The efficiency of these categories in the definition of ownership is immeasurably higher than the appropriation categories. Property has been presented as an economic category to human society throughout its history, with the exception, perhaps, of those initial stages when man has not yet emerged from nature and satisfied his needs with the help of such simpler means of appropriation as possession and use. Of course, over the course of the centuries-long history of mankind, property has undergone significant changes, mainly due to the development of productive forces, sometimes quite stormy, as, for example, it took place during the industrial revolution or is taking place now in the era of the scientific and technological revolution. It is customary to distinguish between primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal-serf and capitalist types of ownership. Until recently, the socialist type of property was also singled out as a special one, for which, apparently, there were no sufficient grounds. In none of the countries of the world that were once part of the socialist commonwealth, socialism was actually built. The direct producers in these countries were still subjected to exploitation; the reunification of the means of production with the workers in production did not really take place. The type of property that, under the conditions of a totalitarian regime (sometimes undisguised, but in some cases veiled) in these countries, bizarrely combined the characteristic features inherent in the types of property, both previous eras and now existing ones. Recognition of property as special and at that At the same time, a historically changeable economic category, with all the differences in approaches to it, is dominant both in political and economic and in legal science. History knows common and private types of property.

In the Republic of Kazakhstan, in accordance with the civil code, private, state, mixed forms of ownership are recognized:

1. private property acts as the property of citizens and non-state legal entities and their associations;

2. State property is such a system of relations in which the management and disposal of property objects are carried out by representatives of state power.

3. Collective property is such a system of relations in which the labor collective jointly owns, uses and disposes of funds and products.

Within these forms there can be various types of ownership:

1) Individual property
a) Personal property (does not generate income, used for personal purposes: house, furniture, knowledge)
b) Private labor generates income (the family lives by their own labor)
c) Unearned, based on hired labor (enrichment at the expense of someone else's labor)
2) Collective property
a) partnership
b) Cooperative
c) Joint stock company
d) Co-production
3) State property
a) Republican (consists of the republican treasury and property)
b) Communal (consists of the local treasury and property assigned to communal legal entities)

The Republic of Kazakhstan is the subject of republican state property. The subject of communal state property is an administrative-territorial unit. Land plots cannot be in private ownership: agricultural, defense, forest and water funds, specially protected natural areas (Article 193 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan).
Forms of ownership can be transferred one into another and carried out by different methods: nationalization is the transfer of private property to state property (land, transport, industry); privatization (Latin privatus - private) is the transfer of state property to private property.

Acquisition by legal entities and individuals from the state of objects of state property, as well as shares of joint-stock companies created by the transformation of state enterprises and organizations (objects of national heritage, cultural and historical values, reserves are not privatized); denationalization - the return by the state of nationalized property to the former owners (distribution in the Baltic countries); reprivatization - the return to private ownership of state property that arose as a result of the earlier purchase of enterprises, land, shares, etc. from private owners.
The formation of a market economy caused a natural need to transform property relations. It is carried out through denationalization and privatization.