Research On Marx’s Social Formation Theory

Marx’s social formation theory is the core of historical materialism and the great scientific theories success, which resulted from Marx’ proceeding from production of "the reality person" and profound analysis of the horizontal structure and the vertical development of human society by his profound historical insight and scientific method.Any kind of significant value theory has its ideological origins rather than purely fictitious, and Marx’s social formation theory is no exception. Marx made full use of the excellent human ideas and culture heritage during founding social formation theory. Trace to its source, on the whole, conception of social history prior to Marx underwent naive conception of history, god-centered conception of history, human-centered conception of history and rational conception of history. The embryos and the buds of various viewpoints of Marx’s social formation theory can be found in these conceptions of social history of all kinds. So they can be regarded as the ideological origins of Marx’s social formation theory. Marx’s social formation theory, like any scientific theory else, cannot be done at one go, but has quite a long process of the bud, exploration, taking form, development and perfection. In general, Marx’s social formation theory underwent a long process of gradual germination and painstaking exploration in the process of Marx’s transformation from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism, initial formation following establishment of historical materialism and obtaining development in the political economy research, finally, maturity and perfection in the Marx’s research into history and anthropology.Marx’s social formation theory has extensive knowledge and profound scholarship, its crux of a matter specifically highlights triple theoretical domains of social formation, namely the theory of social structure, the theory of social differentiation and the theory of social evolution, which constitute a systematic and scientific theoretical system by combining the static with the dynamic, and unifying the subject and the object. Under the triple theoretical domains of social formation, social formation is an organic "artistic whole", which is formed of the subject and the object. Essential factors of the subject are "the reality person" who engage in practical activities, and essential factors of the object are formed of productive forces, production relationships and superstructure. Essential factors of social formation work together and have an influence on each other, productive forces determines production relationships(economic base) and economic base determines superstructure or vice versa. As the subject of social formation, human being has subjective initiative, which created man himself and society. Marx’s social differentiation is multi-dimensional rather than one-dimensional, we can’t avoid some one-sidedness unless we comprehensively understand Marx’s social differentiation from many different angles. The multi-dimension of Marx’s social differentiation is specifically shown by double yardstick namely measure of science, measure of value and three standard namely productive forces, production relationships and human development. Both measure of science and measure of value are basic contents of "man’s perceptual activity" or practice rather than binary opposition,they coexist in the integral unity of "man’s perceptual activity" and achieve mutual contact and transformation, so "man’s perceptual activity" is the objective foundation of integrating measure of science with measure of value. The secret lies in that the history of human society is nothing more than the results of "man’s perceptual activity". The intrinsic dynamic mechanism of evolution of social formation is formed of contradictory relationship with mode of production as the core that formed in "man’s perceptual activity" or practice:human being-needs-production-developed people-new needs-production with qualitative change. The intrinsic motivation from "the reality person" and the fundamental power from basic social contradictions promote continuous development and evolution of social formation from a lower stage into a higher one and from simplicity to complexity. The evolutionary process of social formation is a dialectical unity of general process and special process.Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a great creation of combining Marxist basic principle especially social formation theory with the concrete practice of China. Marx’s social formation theory is not only the theoretical foundation of the theoretical theme of socialist theoretic system with Chinese characteristics-development, the theoretical mainline-reform and opening up and the theoretical core-people oriented, but also the practice guidelines for the general basis of building socialism with Chinese characteristics-the primary stage of socialism and the overall plan-economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological construction.