In every form of government (state structure), the ruling class was called the ruling class precisely because it had exclusive access to a key resource. This defined the relationships within society and the methods of governance. It also determined the focus of societal efforts. If the ruling class needed to acquire more of that key resource, the entire society would address this issue, guided by the will of the ruling class. Below is a somewhat arbitrary division of the various formations of societal existence. It is arbitrary because:
a) The relationships characteristic of a specific formation are, in one way or another, present in other formations as well. For example, finance, as a system of relationships, existed in ancient times, and the very concept of “capital” originated in Ancient Rome. At the same time, slavery, which is so characteristic of the slave-owning system, still exists today.
b) The method of developing the key resource presented in the table is not exclusive but rather illustrative. The number of slaves initially increased only through raids on neighboring territories, and while these raids remained a significant and major source of slave population growth, over time, all other sources of slave population increase (especially in developed slaveholding societies) collectively provided more slaves than military actions. The illustrative aspect here lies in the fact that the growth of territory, the scale of land ownership, and the need for greater mechanization of labor became prerequisites for a change in the social structure. In other words, landowners rose to the top of the social pyramid. Previously, military forces exploited or even simply plundered landowners, but eventually, landowners began to hire armies. Yes, in both cases, money flows from the landowner to the military, but the paradigm itself changes. Similar analogies can be found in each subsequent transition from one formation to another.
It is difficult to identify formations in a society that coexists with other societies at different stages of development and that are culturally connected to the society in question. Additionally, it is important to understand that there are no “instantaneous” transitions from one formation to another. does not exist A number of seemingly typical properties belong to several formations at once. For example, the form of government or the principle of production. The formation itself is viewed not as a static stage, but as a transitional phase, say, from the artisanal principle of production through industrial to post-industrial, if we take capitalism as an example. In any case, the tables below represent “spherical formations in a vacuum.”
It is difficult to examine in such a beautiful tabular form the formations that existed before the clear emergence of slavery. This includes the so-called “Asiatic” formations, which are characteristic, for example, of the Aegean-Minoan culture in Europe, as well as nomadic societies and other communities with a distinct clan or communal structure.
d) One can “broaden the scale” of the historical timeline, and it will become clear that the variations of the state structure are generally of little significance on a historical scale that spans tens of thousands of years of societal development. Then can be considered the following formations:
- A community consisting of 10 to 30 people, similar to a herd;
- A tribe that is still capable of making collective decisions and where everyone knows each other;
- Leadership (with the assignment of the elite of society’s labor);
- The state (with a monopoly of the ruling class on power and information);
In that case, the form of government is of no real significance, and only conditional layers are distinguished based on the degree of information monopolization by the state, the development of bureaucracy created for the purpose of exploiting the resulting asymmetry of information, and the evolution of decision-making systems.
With this approach reconism It can also be seen as the next formation after the state, where there are no monopolies, everyone knows everything about each other again, and decisions can be made collectively thanks to information technology.
At the same time:
Table of Contents
Slavery
| Management: | Tyranny |
| Ruling class: | Slave owners |
| The foundation of the economy: | Slave labor, agriculture |
| Principle of production: | Assigning, agricultural |
| Means of address | Natural exchange, universal commodity (gold) |
| Key resource: | Slaves. |
| Method of developing a key resource: | Raids on neighbors |
| Management method: | The right to kill |
| Main consequence: | The expansion of territory; the emergence of large landowners capable of defending their holdings and hiring and feeding their own armies. The shift of initiative from the army to the landowners. |
Feudalism
| Management: | Monarchy |
| Ruling class: | Feudal lords |
| The foundation of the economy | Agriculture, manufacturing |
| Principle of production: | Agricultural, artisanal |
| Means of address | Gold, gold instruments (debt notes, promissory notes, Templar finances, banknotes) |
| Key resource: | Earth. |
| Method of developing a key resource: | Geographical discoveries |
| Management method: | Violence |
| Main consequence: | Growth of trade, development of loans, accumulation of capital. Capitalists control feudal lords through market mechanisms and loans. The shift of initiative from feudal lords to capital owners. |
Capitalism
| Management: | Oligarchy |
| Ruling class: | Capitalists |
| The foundation of the economy: | Industry, finance |
| Principle of production: | Craft, industrial |
| Means of communication | Golden slogans (mainly banknotes), abstract paper money |
| Key resource: | Capital |
| Method of developing a key resource: | Industrialization |
| Management method: | Stimulation |
| Main consequence: | Automation of industry, acceleration of working capital turnover, development of information technology and communication. Bureaucracy controls capital through the organization of privileges and asymmetric access to information. The shift of initiative from capitalists to information managers. |
Informism
| Management: | Netocracy |
| Ruling class: | Bureaucrats |
| The foundation of the economy: | Finance, service sector |
| Principle of production: | Industrial, scientific and informational |
| Means of address | Paper money, account entries (cashless money, SDR, virtual currencies, electronic money) |
| Key resource: | Information |
| The way to develop a key resource: | Informatization |
| Management method: | Motivation |
| Main consequence: | The development of information technology. The advancement of total accounting technologies. The emergence of opportunities for ordinary people to access information about those in power and to hold them accountable through information technology. Additionally, the provision of self-defense for individuals through transparency. A shift in initiative from netocracy (bureaucracy) to a wiki community. |
Reckonism
| Management: | Wiki. |
| Ruling class: | Mass collaboration |
| The foundation of the economy: | Service sector, Wikonomics |
| Principle of production: | Scientific and informational, [?] |
| Means of communication | Account entries, peer-to-peer finance |
| Key resource: | trust in information, reputation |
| Method of developing a key resource: | [?] |
| Management method: | Complicity |
| Main consequence: | Understanding the key resource and the way to develop it would give us the key to understanding the next social order. But there is no such table below 🙂 |
Main trend
| Management: | Increase of the ruling population |
| Ruling class: | A new ruling class rises above the previous one and exploits it by managing a new resource that is essential for the development of the resource owned by the old ruling class. It is important to note that with each new formation, the relative size of the ruling class increases. Ultimately, this should lead to a ruling class that consists of a network of mass collaboration. Every social formation creates a ruling class that is numerically larger than the previous one. This can apparently be explained by scientific and technological progress. Yes, on one hand, scientific and technological progress allows a smaller number of people to manage a larger population (through the development of communication, infrastructure, mathematics and calculations, the invention of control systems such as personal documents, passports, and registration, advancements in weaponry that enable a smaller number of armed individuals to control a larger number of unarmed ones, and the accumulated experience of “standard” solutions, etc.). At the same time, possibility does not mean much in the face of the unlimited needs of each individual. Thus, the ruling class has a size that society can afford without facing destruction, thanks to scientific and technological progress. Essentially, more food equals more non-producing mouths. In theory, sooner or later, a social formation should emerge where the ruling layer of society will overwhelmingly outnumber the exploited layer. Perhaps this is already the case. At the same time, the extreme point of this process logically appears as the absence of subordinate classes. When everyone has a direct influence on decisions regarding where and how to spend public funds. This is essentially the point being made. |
| The foundation of the economy: | It changes as a result of scientific and technological progress. |
| Principle of production: | A key sector of the economy is highlighted, where the majority of the population is employed and which produces b.о.the larger part of the total product. |
| Means of communication | A gradual move away from the material basis—money—further and further into levels of abstraction. |
| Means of communication | The level of abstraction of money is increasing. |
| Key resource: | Abstraction of resources from human authority over other humans. |
| Method of developing a key resource: | What is done benefits the ruling class. This stimulates scientific and technological progress and generates a new resource that the ruling class needs to develop its existing resource. The managers of this new resource rise above the ruling class. |
| Management method: | Easing of management methods |
| Main consequence: | A new formation emerges on a resource built by an old formation. It is the development of a key resource for the existing ruling class that creates the need for a new resource, the ownership of which regulates the ruling class’s access to its key resource. Thus, the owners or managers of the new resource become the owners of a new key resource that governs the old key resource. In this world, a “House that Jack Built” is constructed: The army is engaged in expansion and protecting territory for landowners, who depend on capitalists in the form of industry (technology, chemicals, transportation) and finance (loans, credits, working capital, hedging agricultural risks), who in turn depend on netocrats: corporate and state bureaucracies and information managers (design specifics, the will of board chairpersons, licenses, corporate secrets, communications, underwriting, etc.), who are beginning to depend on the wiki-cloud—those who strip them of exclusive access to information and monitor their every move. |