MODERN CAPITALIST SOCIETY: HISTORICAL LIMITS OF THE COMING SOCIAL CHANGES AND THEIR SOCIAL SUBJECT
A. A. Koryakovtsev
Ural State Pedagogical University, Yekaterinburg, Russia
e-mail: akoryakovtsev@yandex.ru
Abstract. The relevance of this study is associated with the need to revise the theories of modern society, both “Western” and Russian. This is due to the totality of changes that have been taking place in the world since the middle of the 20th century — global not only in terms of breadth, but also in terms of the depth of social changes. They cover not only cultural and political, but also economic parameters of public life. At the same time, they go beyond the concepts and methodological techniques that developed in the theories of the pre-war era — not only classical Marxism and Marxist schools, but also their opponents: positivism, postmodernism, neoliberalism, and so on. The purpose of this study is to develop concepts that adequately reflect them based on the study of the patterns of new world social processes and, with their help, highlight the dynamics of the development of a given society.
When analyzing social phenomena, the author relied on both classical and modern foreign and Russian theoretical works. The methodological basis of the study is classical Marxism, although rethought from the point of view of new social realities. The study is interdisciplinary in nature, as it combines data from the field of social philosophy, history and political economy.
In the article, modern society is taken in the dynamics of social changes and characterized as a society of incomplete denial of the market. Its genesis, historical forms, property relations inherent in it, class structure and the protest subculture associated with it are described, in a word, phenomena that have a backbone character for it.
The study resulted in the development of such concepts as bourgeois-bureaucratic symbiosis, bureaucratic rent and class polyphony. The latter turns out to be especially important for understanding the nature of the protest subculture characteristic of a given society. It differs significantly from the protest subculture of the industrial working class. The author defines it as a subculture of civil self-presentation. It is expressed in “maidans” — bourgeois-democratic revolutions of the secondary type. Due to the socio-psychological characteristics of its driving forces, this subculture is reduced to attempts at political coups, without being able to revolutionize society as a whole.
These studies allow us to conclude that the described socio-economic system as a whole is stable. The social protest generated by it can only reproduce it. The author concludes that the source of social development on the surface of social life is expressed in the contradictions between the groupings of the ruling class. These contradictions are currently aggravated both at the international and domestic levels, which entails another structural restructuring of the capitalist economy.
Key words: capitalism, rent, bureaucracy, class, crisis, neoliberalism, oligarchy, capital, working class, political science.
Cite as: Koryakovtsev, A. A. (2020) [Modern capitalist society: historical limits of the coming social changes and their social subject]. Intellekt. Innovacii. Investicii [Intellect. Innovations. Investments]. Vol. 5, pp. 93–103, https://doi.org/10.25198/2077-7175-2022-5-93.
