Nizovtsev Yu. Science, Philosophy, History and Politics

The driving force and source of development of the person and his communities

(Against L.N. Gumilev's passionarity)

Contents

1. Analysis of the main views on the driving forces of the development of society.

2. Dynamics of local human communities in LN. Gumilev's reflection.

3. The driving force of the development of society.

4. The primary source of activity.

4.1. Essence of human activity.

4.2. Manifestation of dissatisfaction of consciousness in the person.

5. Definition of a holistic community.

6. Dynamics of activity of the holistic community.

1. Analysis of the main views on the driving forces of the development of society

The inadequacy of the basic concepts that claim to identify the driving forces or the driving force of the development of society can be traced from a comparatively brief analysis below.

Approaches to identification of sources, reasons or driving forces of development of society are divided into two primary groups: one of them is made of representatives by idealistic philosophy, another – materialistic.

Idealistic philosophy, in particular, Hegel, pointed to the notion far from concreteness, – public consciousness which, according to him, and is the main source of social development, and only it one determines it, whereas the materialistic philosophy, for example, Marx, on the contrary, believed that only public life and activity determine the public consciousness.

As can be seen, both approaches do not prove, but merely declare their understanding of the problem, mentioning only the external expression of hidden antagonistic forces, but they do not open them, and therefore the entire history of determining the driving forces of social development shows the searches and finds of various external factors, often far from each other, more or less influencing the course of development of society, i.e. the antagonism of the basic components of human and social consciousness has not been revealed.

The visible does not mean penetration into the depth. Therefore, even a brief analysis of the factors listed below, which are considered by their authors to be the primary sources, the reasons or the driving forces of the development of society, shows that they cannot be as the primary, but they are derivative, secondary factors which only contribute to the transition of the deep antagonism in the human and social consciousness into social development, and some of them are just the conditions for social development.

Materialistic analysis of the problem allocates as the driving forces of the development of society the factors mostly of a natural-structural character.

C.L. Montesquieu has considered as the source of social development the geographical conditions and the environment: "The law, generally speaking, is a human mind, inasmuch it governs all people of the earth … They (laws) have to correspond to physical properties of the country, to its climate – to cold, hot or moderate, to qualities of the soil, its situation, sizes … in the countries, which are fertile, more often happens the ruling of one, and the infertile countries are ruled by a few, that is sometimes as if by kind of compensation for adverse natural conditions" [1, p. 168, 393].

Certainly, natural conditions are an important factor for existence – less or more favorable, but not more than that, since they are just one of many external factors – exactly conditions that can somehow affect the life of communities – but they are not the driving forces of development. In addition, as the history of primitive communities shows, regardless of geographic conditions and the natural environment, for tens of thousands of years no visible development was observed for these communities.

J.J. Rousseau believed, that the number of population should be attributed to the driving force of social development: "Before the invention of special signs, replacing all values, wealth could consist almost exclusively in lands and herds of livestock, which were the only actual good things, which people could own. But when the land ownerships, passing by inheritance from generation to generation, so increased in number and size, that they covered by themselves the whole earth and came into contact with each other, then some were able to grow only at the expense of others. Those people who did not do anything, because weakness or carelessness prevented them, in turn, to acquire land, became poor, without having lost anything, because they did not change when everything changed around. From here little by little arose domination and slavery or violence and robberies, depending on differences in character of that and others" [2, p. 83].

Free occupation of the land plots, proportional to the increase of the population really does end once with all the ensuing consequences, but this fact is difficult to consider as primary and determining in the development of communities, since it does not indicate the reason of the population growth and, therefore, it is an external factor, and not primary.

D.E. Durkheim considered the social differentiation of labor as the main driving force of the development of society, because he believed that, unlike simple communities, where people are connected by personal relationships, interests and traditions, people in modern large communities increasingly rely on each other due to differences in their own specialization. At the same time, Durkheim considered the growth of population and population density to be key factors in the development of society [3, p. 106; 4, p. 125].

Certainly, a sufficient number and density of the population favor to emergence of various crafts, and then – to the differentiation of labor to facilitate and improve its productivity. All this, naturally, can be carried to the favorable conditions promoting emergence and fixing of the property rights, and accordingly – towards the development of trade, cities, states and much more, but all these factors are only the outer framing of the process of the development of human and its communities. Therefore, the question remains of what after all drives people to move forward in case, if the favorable conditions arise.

K. Marx tried to prove that the driving force of social development is the contradiction between needs of people and opportunities of their satisfaction which is being allowed in the struggle of the productive forces of society and the tools of labor, as well as – in the struggle of owners of the manufacture, against a class of employees on this manufacture [5].

Here, too, remains without determining the source of the emergence of the people's growing needs, forcing them not content with the necessary, but to seize for themselves, taking away from others, everything possible, including what they are not able to exhaust or use during life. Therefore, this factor cannot but proceed from some hidden, internal source, i.e. it is the secondary.

The engine of history is the struggle for existence. Such is, in particular, opinion of the representative of school of social Darwinism Ludwig Gumplowicz. He believes that conflicts in society are ineradicable, because people mercilessly are fighting for influence, the survival and dominance. Gumplowicz argues that any society develops in accordance with the law, consisting in "… the desire of each social group to subordinate to itself every other social group encountered in its path, in the aspiration for enslavement, domination" [6, p. 159].

However, similar ruthless struggle for survival and existence is characteristic fullest not for the person, and flora and fauna whereas for the person this struggle coexists, for example, with altruism, mercy, self-respect, and these human features not always suffer defeat in the course of the struggle of the person for existence: the person in the realities of life, unlike animals, knows about own mortality, but in many cases this knowledge ignores, that in many respects influences progress in development of communities, especially in moral aspect. In other words, unlike the rest living beings who fight for survival among themselves the person first of all struggles with himself within himself, and only individuals with overwhelming domination of the lowest consciousness fall practically to an animal state.

Thus, in fact, all the above considerations of various scientists who adhere to the materialistic position, about the driving forces of social development cannot be adequate: they are external factors or conditions that can only accelerate or slow down the process of development of these or those communities of civilization, but it is impossible to name each of them or even all these factors together, as the sources, causes or primary driving forces of the development of society.

Indeed, these phenomena and conditions to a greater or lesser extent have existed under the primitive communal system, when tens of thousands of years there was no visible development. Means, their action depends on certain hidden processes, on accumulation in human communities of some "substance". The main thing from these hidden processes is the functioning of the new – already human consciousness, outside of which the person would have remained as a primate, and this activity begins to become complicated, accelerate and be shown with bigger efficiency with growth of self-consciousness of the person, which is absent about other living beings, and this growth attracts due to the creativity more and more various information streams to the person and his communities.

The idealistic approach to the problem of the development of society as and a materialistic one, exposes a number of different factors, but mostly of an intangible character, which, in opinion of their authors, are the driving forces of social development.

Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis attributes the driving force of social development to the rooting in man of a consciously manifested the thrust towards God: "So this heavenly hail, while he is in earthly wandering, calls on citizens from all nations and recruits a itinerant society in all languages, without regard for the fact that there are various in rights, laws and institutions by which the world of the earth is established or maintained; nothing of the latter. not abolishing or destroying, but, on the contrary, saving everything, that, although is different for other peoples, but is directed to the same goal of the earthly world, unless it hinders the religion that teaches to honoring of one supreme and true God "[7. About a God's hail. XIX, 17].

The thrust to God means first of all the aspiration of the person to get closer to perfection, but, as we know, good intentions can lead away in the opposite direction up to such limit where opportunities for development disappear completely. Almost all religious sects and such large confession as Muslim are an example of it.

Pitirim Sorokin believes the accumulation of base of scientific knowledge is the main source of development, as a result of which the contradictory variety of real-life sociocultural systems will be transformed to a certain integrated sociocultural layer [8].

Scientific knowledge in itself is dead – it is necessary to manage to apply it in a timely manner in time without manifestation of negative results, otherwise – instead of transformation of systems in the progressive direction will happen regress, that was being happened incalculable number of times, and which threatens especially now from "achievements" of genetics.

Gabriel Tarde notes that the driving force behind the development of society is the creative mind in the form of rationalization of tools of work and life, including the inventive. The last Tard considers as an adaptation mechanism, without which it is difficult for a person to apply himself to changing environmental conditions.

The new arises as a result of the activity of a few gifted individuals. Then the process of imitation begins. In particular, according to the Tarde, the assertion of the basic social institutions was due to the inability of ordinary people to invent, and they began to imitate the innovators [9].

The inventive first of all develops technologies, but practically does not touch the sphere of the spirit, the senses, i.e., it mounts kind of the shell, but not the inner – spiritual and cultural – content of the person and his communities. The inventive does not affect national-being features, at this, some of the new technologies can lead society to the collapse weaning the person to work creatively and stupefying him, which, in particular, is happening now in the information sphere, they even are able completely to annihilate mankind by super-powerful weapons, genetic experiments or poisonous substances.

Protestantism regards labor as the source of the development of society, believing that labor is a manifestation in each person of his chosenness by God. In particular, Jean Calvin argued that every Christian must firmly believe in chosenness of a person by God, and throughout his life to tirelessly seek more and more confirmation to this faith, achieving successes in worldly activities, which is the criterion of the chosenness by God [10].

Only one labor is not able to improve as the world of any individual, and to affect significantly the development of communities. Labor can not only do the person more honorable and improve everyday life, but also lead to stultifying, for example, by its monotony and mismatch to the true abilities and interests of the person, and, on the contrary, the time, free from labor, can give the chance to the person to define in itself additional abilities and skills, to develop them, in particular, to improve the process of labor, and an able idler can pity the silly worker and so improve the work process that its productivity will increase many times over, and the work process will become more pleasant and more interesting.

In actuality, conscious labor, unlike the work of bees or termites, is appeared only with the formation of self-consciousness, which has detached the person partly from the animal components of the environment, and allowed him not instinctively as earlier, but with full consciousness of the case to formulate tasks and perform them, consciously changing the environment to achieve the set goals, gaining thereby liberty.

A.J. Toynbee has come to the conclusion that the driving forces of the development of society are the activities of personalities by chosen by God, military aggression, unprofitable resource and geographical position [11].

The activities of God's chosen personalities, as follows from the definition of this driving force of development of communities, clearly points to supervisor of this force, that, on the one hand, expresses external character this force, and on the other hand, the definition unites Christianity with Muslim fatalism depriving autonomy all historical development.

Wars cannot be the primary cause of the community development – they are not even secondary, but tertiary factors that affect civilizational development, since, as a rule, they are being caused by a conflicts in relation to property and resources between the elites of different states.

Unfavorable resource and geographical location, as it is visible from real historical examples, is capable not only to promote (Japan), but also to slow down, development of communities (Pakistan) as well as not to influence this process (Bulgaria) at all. Therefore, these factors cannot be qualified as primary driving forces of social development.

P. Lavrov argued that the critical consciousness of the intelligentsia is the driving force of social development.

In this respect, Peter Lavrov noted: "Philosophical ideas are important not as a manifestation of the process of development of the spirit in its logical abstraction, but as logical forms of consciousness by a person of higher or lower dignity, more extensive or closer goals of own existence; they are important as a form of protest against the present in the name of the desire for a better and more just social order or as the forms of satisfaction by the present" [12, p. 19-28]; "Ideals of a person's life are realizable only in society; but – society, as an ideal unit, finds its real realization only in the unity of personal goals. At all the division of parties, at the struggle of opinions, at the struggle of interests, only then the struggle is reasonable, useful for society and progressive, when the disputants are on the same soil and represent only different aspects of the human moral ideal. As soon as there is nothing in common between disputants, once human dignity has lost its guideline importance in the struggle of individuals and masses, only a catastrophe that completely changes social forms and personal relationships can lead to progressive development"[13, 506-507].

The critical consciousness of the intelligentsia under certain conditions can lead not to development, but to the regress of the community, to the decline of the whole state.

A significant compromise between the power elite and the informal opposition in the person of intellectuals is impossible, inasmuch the imperious elite never voluntarily will make serious concessions and never voluntarily will concede the power. However, if on average the level of the highest consciousness at her representatives is not too low, and the criticism from oppositional intellectuals is effective, implicating involving the broad masses of the population in the protest movement, then the imperious elite can be inclined to reforms as it, for example, was being occurred the last hundred years in Europe.

Otherwise, instead of smooth reforms the case may end with the complete replacement of the imperious elite, the overthrow of the state system, and even to the changing economic relations, as it has been happened in Russia in 1917.

But Lavrov was wrong about the mandatory progress at such replacement of formations. This is confirmed by the same experience of Russia, which after 1917 received the era of wars, genocide of own population, brutal dictatorship, and in the end – the collapse of the state.

Nevertheless, Peter Lavrov has guessed the external expression of one of the sides of the hidden antagonistic forces acting in the public consciousness, namely: the dominant highest consciousness, which come to the peak in the opposition-minded, educated and honest people of intellectual labor – the dominant highest consciousness in these people counteracts the lowest consciousness predominating in the governing structures of communities (imperious elite) in which people of mental labor do not differ in honesty, self-respect, altruism, nobility, and they at best simple are forced to sail in the stream of hypocrisy, acquisitiveness, covetousness, deception and corporative interests.

As for the rest of the population, it is basically a soil for representatives of both intellectual layers from which they themselves grew hereditarily, accidentally, or thanks to certain skills, qualities, lifted them above the average level, and this soil they can spoil or improve, inasmuch population are usually passive for the most part because of the employment by monotonous labor for survival and pro-feeding or falling into the category of lumpen, for whom everything became indifferent; obdurate traditions; religious delusions; predispositions to negative impact of active promotion of the information bluffs, which dupe it; lack of due education level, that does not allow it to use in large quantities social elevators and to set before itself the high purposes: similar sad and gloomy life does not promote transformation of all mass of people into bright, creative, vigorous and communicable individuals. Only several percent of such persons is allocated out of all of population.

The faceless masses of the people are gaining the development in the person of their representatives in power and in the informal intellectual opposition to the power. Informal intellectuals, pursuing mainly goals diametrically opposed to the goals of representatives of the imperious elite, are compelled to appeal to the people, proving own rightness and anti-people character of the elite-oppressor, and representatives of the power in its turn has to justify itself and stigmatize of the rotten dreamers-nonconformists, able only to speak, but not to operate and rule.

Thereby the people masses are being involved willy-nilly by energy of relatively few persons these into forward, and this motion can be evolutionary in case of the consent of the elite and the informal opposition to certain compromises in the interests of the working masses, but it can jump abruptly into a different direction if there is no such consent, which is reflected in the popular consciousness as an injustice, being transformed into more or less successful attempt of the removal of the ruling elite from power in the event of suitable conditions.

Nevertheless, the masses, in addition to being the basis for development, have their own trend, since they also have self-consciousness, though lower level in comparison with intellectuals. Therefore, the masses can independently, as it is happened repeatedly in China, and more often – in alliance with the informal intellectual opposition stratum, to promote the community's exit from the stagnant state into the development zone.

Follows from the arguments given above, that the factors described above, which authors-idealists consider to be the driving forces of the development of society, are one-sided and limited – they mostly lack the spirit of contradiction, which indicates that they are all products of the dynamics of human activity, but – not by internal basis of the development of society, i.e. – not by the true hidden source, the cause or driving force of the development of society.

A brief analysis of the factors that, according to their authors, are the driving forces of social development, shows their one-sidedness and external character, i.e. secondary nature of these factors with respect to the true driving force of the development of society, which we will try to reveal in the next lines.

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