Шестопалов Юрий
A new theory of socioeconomic transformations. The fallacies of Marxism

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A new theory of socioeconomic transformations. The fallacies of Marxism

Yuri K. Shestopaloff

   This article is written in Russian and in English. The last version is in English (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15660540)
  
   Humanity is relatively good in discovering new specific, concrete knowledge. At the same time, progress in acquiring general knowledge, of high level, such as what fundamental objective factors determine the development, transformation, and degradation of human societies, is relatively insignificant, despite the abundance of publications. Authors often express opposing, non-converging opinions, usually originating on the basis of ideologies reflecting interests of different classes, from the very rich to the lower classes, while the search for truth requires an open mind, which is difficult to maintain in matters that directly affect classes' interests. One of the popular theories that claims to explain the fundamental causes of socioeconomic transformations of human communities, and especially the causes of changes of socioeconomic formations, is Marxism, a doctrine that originated in the middle of the 19th century. However, the practice of applying Marxism during the last century did not confirm its predictions, which was due to both subjective reasons and, as we show here, because of the principal flaws of the teaching. In this work, the fallacies of Marxism are analyzed, and a new theory is proposed explaining the reasons of changing socioeconomic formations, and the development and transformation of human societies in general. The main ideas of this theory are that the life of human communities is organized around the acquisition, production, and most importantly the distribution of common resources. As a socio-biological being, man needs to acquire material resources, and to obtain a certain social status. Since people are not equal in principle, in all characteristics, this leads to uneven distribution of commonly produced by the society resources, which in turn leads to the formation of different socioeconomic classes, distinguished by the material and social status of its members and common approaches to income and wealth acquisition. Since each class seeks to obtain more resources, those capable doing this are trying to promote favorable for them certain socioeconomic changes using different means, including social, organizational, technological, systemic innovations, depending on the historical and overall situation. Generally, it turned out that different factors play a role in such processes than Marx believed, and accordingly these processes themselves, and their outcomes follow different patterns. Before studying these patters though, the work considers major laws of classical economics, contrasting them to a neoliberal economics, whose implementation produced such distressing results in many modern Western countries. At the end, the study examines possible development of the current socioeconomic situation in the world in terms of ongoing and future socioeconomic changes, and suggests approaches that could make such changes beneficial for the broader spectrum of population.
  
   Table of contents
  
  -- The reasons of popularity, and the main achievements of Marxism
  -- Marxism's structure and relationships of its economic, ideological and philosophical parts
  -- Marxist ideological doctrine
  -- Introduction. Acquisition, production and distribution of material resources as an objective basis for socioeconomic changes
  -- Remark 1. Material and ideal
  -- Types and properties of resources
  -- Marxism and its ideological part historical materialism
  -- Remark 2. About research methodologies for social phenomena
  -- Basic principles of Marxism
  -- Disregard of the role of resources in Marxism
  -- The importance of a materialistic philosophical view of the analysis of socioeconomic phenomena
  -- Acquisition and distribution of resources as the basis of people's life activity
  -- Similarity of historical socioeconomic systems
  -- Struggle for social and economic status in socialist societies
  -- Remark 3. Was the destruction of the Soviet Union inevitable?
  -- Definition of socioeconomic classes
  -- Example of defining socioeconomic classes and consequences of mistakes
  -- Objective factors that determine socioeconomic changes
  -- What's next?
  -- Summary and inferences. Wide gates of opportunities
  -- References
  
   The reasons of popularity and the main achievements of Marxism
  
   Marxism's structure and relationships of its economic, ideological and philosophical parts
  
   Many people would like to live in a just and lawful society. When they are oppressed and exploited beyond measure, it is only natural that they upraise to resist exploitation and unfair treatment. Given the ubiquity of economic and social unfairness in modern societies, people want to understand why this is happening and what can be done to make their lives better. Many teachings attempt to provide answers to these questions, both religious and social. One of such doctrines is Marxism, founded by K. Marx, and subsequently developed by his many followers, including famous people like V. Lenin, I. Stalin. Lenin, and especially Stalin, practically implemented the provisions of Marxist ideology, creating a whole country, the Soviet Union, according to its guidelines.
   It is important to have a clear understanding that Marxism as a teaching has three distinct parts, which very much differ in quality of development and truthfulness. The purpose of this article is to present a new theory, explaining which principal factors define socioeconomic transformations of human societies, for which we contrast the proposed theory with the ideological part of Marxism. However, this ideological doctrine should be considered together with the economical part of Marxist teaching, which belongs to classical economics, in order to fully understand what errors were made and why in the ideological part, which is not a trivial exercise. Otherwise, it would be difficult to understand how Marx came to such rather extreme ideological views. The third, philosophical part of Marxism, is assumed to be dialectical materialism. The thing is that Marx himself took no participation in developing of this philosophical teaching, and given his few known comments did not see much value in it, even though this philosophy could be very helpful to discover the fallacies of the ideological part.
   Marx's input into classical economical theory, i. e. the theory of value, price, and rent, which is the creation of A. Smith, D. Ricardo and other distinguished political economists of 18th and 19th centuries, is acknowledged and respected among specialists in classical economics. By all means, these works, which quite deservedly became classics of economical studies, are of high value from the perspective of political economy, which still did not lose its significance. Although Marx's economical works are not studied in Western universities, this is by no means because of the quality or obsolescence of these works, but solely because of the dominance of neoliberal economists in academic circles. The last ones purposefully promote views counteracting ideas of classical economists, in order to serve interests of big capital, especially the one representing unproductive sectors, and accordingly to justify increasing exploitation and deprivation of lower classes. However, the truth is that it is classical political economics, which could provide today much needed efficient solutions to fix many serious problems, which Western countries face presently in economics and politics. Many of these problems were created exactly due to intentional ignorance of concepts of classical economics in favor of neoliberal economics, whose main underlying purpose is protecting interests of the riches under the disguise of "freedom". (What this "freedom" means will be discussed later.)
   One of the main principal features, characterizing economical activity, according to founders of classical economics, is either this is a productive activity, producing economical value, or a unproductive one, which produces no or little value. (We would add that some activities could be even counter-productive, undermining productive activity.) The main principle of productive sector was understood by classical economists as described in the following quote from article [1]: "They (industrial capitalists - Y. S.), of course, didn't want to have to raise the wages they paid but they realized that labor needed high wages in order to be productive, in order to become industrial labor. And the high wages took the form, very largely, of cutting the cost of living by these governments playing the role of receiving the land rent, so that it didn't have to tax labor. So labor didn't have to pay landlords and wouldn't have to pay monopoly prices. ... The whole idea was to streamline the means of production. And that was what the economists meant by a free market." (Italics by Y. S.)
   To reiterate the quote, this should be the role of the government to reduce the cost of living for the labor working in industrial production, in productive sector, using taxes received in the form of land rent paid by the land owners, by landlords, representing unproductive sector. Similarly, it was supposed to tax other unproductive sectors, such as banking, financial speculators, monopolists, and use that money to reduce the cost of living for the labor, say by redistributing the funds to labor and the whole population in general, through cheap public services, utilities, public infrastructure, free or cheap education, etc. That would allow to pay lesser wages to labor, while preserving high standard of its living, which in turn would increase capital available for reinvestment into industrial, productive, development, and consequently increasing the overall mass of produced goods. The more produced goods would mean their lesser price, potentially better quality, greater assortment and more innovation. Indeed, some conditions applied, these are not unrealistic benefits of such an economical arrangement, which favors productive activity, production of value.
   However, for capitalism, that would be rather a paradoxical development, as this is acknowledged in [1]: "The industrialists organized production, developed markets, did all sorts of things in order to compete with rivals abroad and to create markets for themselves throughout the world. But in order to continue to compete, in order to become really competitive, whether it was against their will or not, industrial capitalism had to evolve into socialism." This is maybe a clause not very easy to grasp, but actually it would be a very logical development. If not for the government taking care of high standard of living for labor by public spending, which allows productive capitalists paying lesser wages and so having more capital for reinvestment, then the capitalists would have to pay those expenses in the form of higher wages. But then there will be less capital for reinvestment for them, and so they would have to begin reducing the wages, which in turn will reduce productivity.
   This inevitable deadlock, and the socialism as the only solution to avoid it, was understood by many people in 19th century, not only by Marx. And that was the overall mood of that time. The article [1] acknowledges in this regard: "... there was a general idea that you needed a mixed economy, an increasingly active government public sector alongside private production in order to prevent the monopolists, the landlords, and the bankers from the rent-seeking that would have prevented industrial economies from being productive."
   So, it is this overall economic development in the Marx time, which led him to ideological socialistic inspirations; unfortunately a way too romantic and unrealistic ones for the real human nature. However, Marx did not have tools to verify his belief for validity, and he did not want to. (Believers do not need proofs.)
   All such possible developments with a socialistic flavor certainly were not in interests of unproductive classes, which vehemently opposed them. As a text in [1] describes it, "there was a counter-revolution against this and when people like Frederick Hayek and Margaret Thatcher talked about the free market ... it meant a market free for rent seekers, for landlords, for monopolists, free of any government regulation to prevent rent interests. And so industrial capitalism in the 20th century, accelerating in the 1980s, became the antithesis of the revolution that industrial capitalism sought to create."
   In other words, all these unproductive classes managed to preserve their privileges to still consume in abundance resources, material values, produced by productive sector, while producing pretty much close to none themselves. Even more so that their actions were principally directed to suppress production of material values, make it more difficult and expensive. Sounds like a double parasitism, but this is what indeed it was. Thus, consumption of produced values by unproductive classes, obviously, worsens conditions for productive activities in different ways, sucking resources, which otherwise could be used for production purposes and supporting higher standard of living for all.
  
   0x08 graphic
  
   Fig. 1. Scheme of contribution into the total value of produced resources by different participants of a production sector, as well as some minor input from unproductive sectors (monopolists, bankers, landlords). The right side shows shares of produced resources consumed by the same participants, plus taxation.
  
   We will illustrate these basic tenets of classical economics using scheme on Fig. 1. Here in the center one can see two columns of the same height presenting produced values and consumed values. (Columns present equal amount of values, meaning how much value is produced, the same value is consumed.) Value is created by productive sectors (upper left dashed box), whose examples are presented by industrial, agricultural production, infrastructure projects and public social projects resulting in producing material values. Unproductive sectors could also produce some little value. For instance, monopolists could provide some material value, although they charge for it high monopolistic prices, thus actually consuming much more than they create. Similarly, bankers, financial sector provide some useful value, such as creating money (currency emission), providing credit, although this useful value occupies a small fraction of financial activities in capitalist countries, while the main purpose is extracting material values in a monetary form created in productive sectors.
   As a side note, the function of state banking in China is restricted pretty much to only creating money and credit, without all the rest of predatory functions banks engage in capitalist countries. Such a policy provides good conditions for developing production sectors, as well as supporting higher standard of living by public spending. Furthermore, keeping at bay monopolists and all the possible rentiers significantly reduces value consumed by unproductive sectors, thus redistributing the overall consumed value in favor of production sectors and public spending, and accordingly to appropriate classes of population. Preserving such a policy, favoring production, is what allows China to have GDP roughly twice as large as in Western countries. It is worth also noting that in Western countries rent is considered as a product, while this is just a plain common sense that it is not a product. And the only reason for such a nonsense is lobbying of rentiers. It was said in [1]: "That's why our GDP accounts and our national income accounts count rent as a contribution to product. But it's not a product. Marx is very clear. He distinguished the production economy, product and consumption, from the unproductive economy, the circulation economy. That's the same thing that other economists who criticized monopolies, the German reformers who industrialized banking, wanted to prevent - banking playing an unproductive role."
   Favoring production means favoring it in taxation, while putting a tax burden on unproductive sectors. But this is not what one can see in capitalist countries. M. Hudson said in [1] in this regard:
   "Well, Adam Smith today would be called a Marxist because he urged changing around the tax system to tax the landlords and not labor and capital. Remember, he accused businessmen of seeking monopolies. And if you want to prevent that, well, with anti-monopoly legislation, that's called Marxist. Every reform that the classical economists urged in order to free markets is called Marxist today." Note how the notion of "free markets" is presented here. Very much different from the neoliberal economics.
   There is another important, moral dimension when it comes to distinguishing productive and unproductive activity. The first one is a creative, constructive one, it assumes mentality of a creator. The unproductive mentality was traditionally considered as a parasitic one, both in a public opinion and in many religious and spiritual teachings. It is only when unproductive sectors gained influence on public opinion through media, which they owned or control, it is only then they managed to shift the public opinion towards more favorable view of the unproductive activity. However, it did not change the essence of it as of a speculative, parasitic one, and accordingly the mentality of people engaged in it.
   Back to the scheme in Fig. 1. The height of rectangles composing the column "Produced values" reflects on input of particular sectors. The height of rectangles composing the column "Consumed values" similarly presents how much each sector consumes from the total produced values. The significantly greater heights of consumed values for unproductive sectors reflect (qualitatively) a disproportionally greater amount of value they consume. This consumed value is not coming from nowhere, but it is taken from the share produced by a productive sector. For instance, banking sector receives interest on loans, which is taken from the produced value, say from wages, profits of producing companies, and so on - bankers invented tons of tricks, instruments, and lobbied many laws for extracting produced value, and putting it into their coffers.
   Similarly monopolists and landlords create favorable for them environment to extract disproportionally high produced value compared to their input. As it is said in [1]: "And a society that does that is siphoning wealth away from economic development to sustaining these special groups." Precisely. And then this wealth is put into billions cost mansions in French Riviera, hundred meters long yachts, ridiculous paintings, expensive jewelry and other similar things, which withdraw capital from circulation, while all these things have little real value being just a variety of coffers for storing wealth, which, by the way, is taken away from maybe well over half of the entire population, from people who earned it and who indeed needed it for the basic life necessities.
   The next rectangle up presents taxation. If the labor and productive industry is taxed, then production is obviously suppressed. If unproductive sectors are taxed more, then more value remains in productive sectors, and so they have more resources for development. Besides, if the taxation money are directed to support higher standard of living by providing cheaper services to the public, like utilities, public roads, that will also contribute to development of productive industries. A good example of such a country with socialistic tendencies, providing cheap public services, was Canada in 60s, 70s and partially in 80s. And a high standard of living people there had, that was much due to the taxation money directed to public projects and to the public good in general. As the former MP Ken Dryden noted in his first book, fifty years ago people did not object high taxes since they saw that the money were used for the benefit of the whole society. Since then the taxes only increased further, while the beneficiaries overwhelmingly became only special groups close to the governing bodies of all levels, through the various corruption schemes, accompanied, naturally, by extremely high costs and low productivity, when such schemes are realized through the public projects.
   To understand better the dynamics of economical situation, one can consider extreme scenarios. Say, when unproductive sectors consume more and more produced value, that is the total height of lighter rectangles (Unproductive sectors) in the "Consumed value" column increases, the total height of darker rectangles (Productive sectors) accordingly decreases. Eventually the production will be suppressed, the labor will receive very small wages, there will be no material value for infrastructure and social projects, and the prices for everything will have to go up, bringing inflation. Productive sectors in such a situation will move production to countries with a cheaper labor and better conditions for manufacturing. Bankers still could offer loans, but since productive sectors are suppressed, there will be not enough wages and profit to pay interest and to repay the loans. Besides, since there will be little material value produced, everything will be expensive, inflation will be higher, and so the bankers will charge higher interest, which would only aggravate the ability to pay interest. Cheaper imports could save the situation for some time, but since the local production will shrink, people will have less and less money anyway, since high wages can be earned in productive sectors, but not in servicing economy, as presently populations of many Western countries can assert. What has been just said, is not an irrelevant description of the real economic situation in most Western countries. And the major reason for that is the dominance of unproductive sectors. (As an example: think how many people participate in trading on financial markets, which is by and large a gambling, how much energy and resources this activity consumes. However, in its core, bringing very little value, this is an unproductive activity, while all those enormous resources and energy could be directed towards productive activity, creating real material value.)
   Decrease of production of material value will increase prices for everything, and in particular for the housing, which will only exacerbate housing crisis presently many Western countries experience. The bankers were always the first interested in inflated housing prices, which is not difficult to arrange for them, introducing laws and regulations making difficult to start construction, and very expensive to complete it (say, through the fake "green concerns", imposing carbon emission taxes, charging exuberant construction fees, delaying approval of construction projects, etc.). This is happening across many Western capitalist countries, and it is happening in about the same way, which says much about the commonality and principal nature of the underlying factors, some of which were mentioned above.
   So, by and large, the economic situation in a country is defined by the composition of darker and lighter rectangles creating the columns "Produced values" and "Consumed values" in Fig. 1. The lesser is the total height of lighter rectangles in "Consumed values", presenting consumption of unproductive sectors, the better off should be the economic situation in a society. Certainly, there are other factors at play, affecting the types of participating sectors and their inputs, but eventually it all converges to the composition of darker and lighter rectangles in these columns, what is the taxation base, and how much of taxation money is used for the public good.
   That what Marx did in political economy. The solid foundation, he later elaborated his ideas on, was laid by A. Smith, D. Ricardo and other prominent economists. But Marx found a somewhat different angle of view on the same phenomenon. He did not attribute to himself much of the conceptual apparatus of political economy, which was developed before him. Instead, he always pointed out to the fact that it was the solid foundation created by the predecessors that allowed him to create his works.
   However, a completely different situation was in ideological sphere, in which there were no such a prior solid foundation developed on the basis of scientific analysis. Unlike the well developed tenets of political economy, Utopian socialist visions, which existed before Marx, were deprived any scientific reasoning, but were rather nice social fantasies about possible better life of human beings. In this regard, Marx witnessed an initial socialization of the society required for a successful start of industrial capitalism. However, he extrapolated this initial trend in a linear fashion, not anticipating the emergence of other prominent factors down this winding road, which will eventually overtake this initial development. So great was his belief into namely socialist development, so much he was captivated by this idea, that he did nothing to verify validity of provisions of his ideological doctrine. And since this time he did not have a foundation, and was unable to create the one of his own, the results were much different. This is what we are turning our attention to in the next section.
  
   Marxist ideological doctrine
  
   Unfortunately, as a social doctrine, Marxism is a radical teaching in the sense that it promotes a radical social ideology based on the idea of destroying the bourgeoisie and the so-called petty-bourgeois strata of the population, owning the means of production. The majority of the peasantry also fell under this definition. The destruction of the peasantry as a class under this pretext was clearly unreasonable from the point of view of elementary economic common sense, and common sense in general. Despite this, numerous such unwise decisions have been implemented, bringing great distress, miseries and tragedies to many people.
   Nevertheless, the part of Marxist ideology that called people to build a more just society met the desires of many, which brought popularity to this doctrine. Unfortunately, with this part in demand, people also accepted other ideological provisions of Marxism, which, among other things, justified extremist actions. This does not mean that, in principle, there can be no such actions and violence during social transformations. When a person is reduced to an animal state, one should not rely on his/her prudence and balanced actions. The rich classes, with their extremism in exploiting and robbing people, often bring the lower classes to a state where they are forced to respond with such actions. But they should be exceptions, not the rule. To take power away from the rich class and give it to another, the working class, is not only an extrimistic, but also an absolutely Utopian idea, because people will immediately separate into other classes, and the class structure of society will not disappear anywhere, as Marx's teaching predicted. And whether such a new class society will be better, is still a question. As a historical experience shows, most of such new societies were actually noticeably worse.
   The very idea of creating a more just, socially oriented society is very attractive, very necessary, and long overdue. But it should be created based on principles that are organically combined with the nature of man and human communities, and not on extremist Marxist ideas. Today, these ideas have proven to be untenable, and the reason for that is their fallacy. Some conclusions of Marxism can be accepted, but in general, this doctrine contains too many incorrect ideas and approaches, and is clearly Utopian in nature. Many critics of Marxism felt this, but they discussed more specific provisions, whereas its basis, the very foundations of Marxism, was difficult to criticize due to its declarative and - in fact - unsubstantiated nature. Science-like in form, they had very little in common with a truly scientific approach.
   Some mistakes of Marxist ideology could be corrected using concepts and categories of philosophical teaching dialectical materialism. However, at the time of creation of Marxist ideology this teaching was not developed. Even more so, Marx was never interested in it, although he was aware about later appearance of such works. Besides, given the thinking approaches Marx used for creating his ideological teaching, when he was captivated by his ideas to the extent of belief, it is doubtful that he could provide such a balanced philosophical analysis.
   At the present stage of development of thought about societal transformations and progress, the need to understand ideological part of Marxism, and identify its mistakes, is certainly of importance, especially given the lasting popularity of this doctrine. However, even much more important is the necessity to develop or create a theory about the objective mechanisms and factors that determine socioeconomic changes and transformations of human societies. This is the main task this work is dedicated to. And knowing mistakes of Marxism and Marxists in the ideological sphere would be very helpful to avoid similar traps.
  
   Acquisition, production and distribution of material resources as an objective basis for socioeconomic changes
  
   The main goal of this work is to present a theory of socioeconomic changes that is more adequate to real life, based on the fact that in the end, no matter how you approach it, the functioning of human communities is reduced to the availability of material and derived resources at their disposal. Or, in other words, to the acquisition, production, and distribution of resources among groups and individual members of human communities. This is why the instinct in preserving available and acquiring new resources is the main incentive for people's activities, embedded deep into subconsciousness. The spectrum between people aiming at preserving available possessions, and the people with insatiable instinct to get more and more of all kinds of resources, by all means, is continuous, while most people have both instincts, in different proportions. In what exact proportion, depends on the personality and the environment. Most people usually shift the preference to maintaining acquired resources than trying to get more new ones, when their possessions grew up to a certain amount. However, there are individuals, which never stop aggressively pursuing more and more acquisitions, regardless how much they already have (which is probably should be considered as the mind and brain pathology).
   The term resources used in this paper refers to material resources, such as food, shelter, agricultural and other land, territory, minerals and products made from them - for example, cars, buildings, roads, and so on - that is, all those material objects and natural resources that people use to support their life. Resources also include other natural factors, such as a climate favorable for agriculture and convenient for living, geographical and other characteristics, such as terrain, convenient for laying transport routes, the presence of other countries and civilizations nearby with which a country or a community can maintain profitable contacts, and so on.
   Resources are also tools for influencing people's worldview, moral, intelligence, and actions, since this way people can mobilize resources of others for their purposes. Examples are the mass media, the Internet, education, government and other public institutions, through which one can manipulate and control the mass consciousness of people, and use it in a way that is beneficial for oneself. This kind of influence is also supported by material resources, for example in the form of bribing officials, as a material base of relevant institutions, the material dependence of government officials and official representatives of power on different groups and individuals, and so on - humanity is very inventive in finding such channels of influence, and inventing tools and methods for influencing other people, their groups, etc., up to the populations of entire countries and continents. But the essence and function of such resources (without taking into account their material basis, such as buildings, computers, employees salaries, etc.) is described by ideal concepts, such as the influence of a particular newspaper on public opinion. Such resources are derived from material resources in the sense that they can be purchased for material resources (or their equivalent as money); so to speak, at a certain "exchange rate". And accordingly, we will distinguish between material resources and resources derived from material resources, or derived resources for short.
  
   Remark 1. Material and ideal. Before moving on, we will have to make a small excursion into the nature of the material and the ideal. When we talked above about the influence of public media on people's worldview and moral, the results of such influence manifest themselves as very specific material phenomena that are expressed in certain states of the brain and the whole body. For example, arousing hatred for the enemy of a country leads to the release of certain hormones and other chemicals in the body, increased blood pressure, narrowing of blood vessels, increased heart rate, and so on. All these physiological and psychological changes are quite material phenomena, which together, integrally create in the consciousness and subconsciousness of a person a qualitatively different phenomenon and physiological and psychological state - hatred of the enemy. But to denote this new quality, an ideal concept is used, an idea - hatred, as an abstraction of a qualitatively distinctive material psycho-physiological state of the body.
   Abstracting qualitatively different phenomena using abstract concepts is a common practice of the human mind to describe, understand and interact with reality. Therefore, all the resources discussed above, including knowledge as such, whose specifics will be discussed later, are material, physical in nature. However, for abstracting, describing them we use ideal concepts, and that's why we talk about them as derived resources. If, for example, we are talking about an ideological struggle, then basically this is a struggle for material resources, a struggle for a certain material state of people's brains and their bodies. But one speaks of this state as about an ideal concept, as, for example, about the ideology of Marxism, accepted by someone by faith under the influence of propaganda.
   Similarly, any knowledge is presented materially as a certain psycho-physiological state of the body. However, as a different quality, that differs from other similar states, it is defined in an abstracted form as ideal. Of course, as an objection, we can mention knowledge compiled using machine learning (also called artificial intelligence for advertising purposes), where a biological organism is not present. But it will be a compilation of previously discovered knowledge, which in some cases can give a new quality derived from the previous knowledge. However, even if we leave aside the peculiarities of machine learning, which is by and large a complex regression of existing knowledge, then such machine knowledge is also material in nature, since it is obtained, structured, and stored using material electromagnetic fields that interact with material components. Remove the material media associated with this knowledge, and it will disappear.
   In general, there are no difficulties with human or "machine" knowledge in terms of materiality that we are interested in, and the designation of ideal concepts. A more detailed review is not necessary for our purposes, this is already outside the topic. It is important for us to understand that knowledge is also a derived resource, denoted by ideal concepts, which can be in demand, and for the acquisition of which people are ready to put considerable effort and spend other resources, including material ones.
  
   Resource types and properties
  
   Let's go back to the resource description. Resources can be owned, such as shoes, clothing, food, or controlled, for which purpose a wide variety of schemes can be used, including very sophisticated ones, for which one can use different interactions and dependencies of people, and of various organizations and institutions. A simple example would be a controlling interest in a company, when owning 51% of the stake actually allows one to control all or almost all of the company's resources. Another example is when a country, without having its own military-industrial complex, is waging war with weapons supplied by another country. It is clear that in the latter case, the howling country is controlled by the arms supplier in many aspects. The government of the supplying country can control a certain part of various resources in the warring country, including very large ones in some cases.
   The share of the total amount of resources, which is acquired or controlled by some member of the society, first of all defines the very possibility of his/her physical existence, as well as material and social status. For people, there is nothing more vital than the control and possession of material and derived resources, since this is the first and main basis of their physical (first) and social-economic (second) existence and survival. Lack of resources (and / or of control over them that provides access to resources) directly worsens the social status, living conditions, physical condition and health of people, and makes reproduction of offspring problematic. And when the amount of resources decreases below a certain minimum, a person cannot physically exist and dies from hunger, cold, and diseases.
   It is precisely to solve this most important task of acquiring resources, to which people's activities have been directed, are directed, and will continue to be directed first of all. Everything else, by and large, are the means to fulfill this main task.
  
   Marxism and its ideological part Historical materialism
  
   It is clear that many readers will take with disbelief the results of my research on the fundamental factors that determine the change of socioeconomic formations. Many people may well ask who am I to discuss such a complex topic? Moreover, since my results are somewhat at odds with the fundamental tenets of Marxism, some may even be puzzled that an unknown person is attempting to criticize a world-famous teaching.
   I have always been interested in philosophy, and especially in dialectical materialism. Some authors of popular articles claim origin of Marx's ideological doctrine on the basis of dialectical materialism. This is not true. Although the first provisions of dialectical materialism were laid by ancient Ionian philosophers, and Anaximander was probably the most prominent in this respect, as a philosophical teaching dialectical materialism started taking shape decades after Marx introduced his ideological teaching historical materialism, which is by and large not a philosophical doctrine. First works on dialectical materialism were written by P. J. Dietzgen, but most of its development this philosophy received during 20st century. As it was said already, Marx himself paid no attention to dialectical materialism, although he was aware of existence of Dietzgen's works. Thus, the ideology of Marxism, historical materialism, should be considered rather as a self-conceived teaching, by and large unrelated to dialectical materialism, even though some of its later presentations could borrow terminology of dialectical materialism. On the other hand, dialectical materialism is a powerful analytical tool, and with regard to analysis of Marxism is probably the best one, since it provides a level of generality commensurate with Marxism's declarations.
   I have written several large articles about dialectical materialism, some have been published, and a couple of articles have been popular on the Internet for about twenty years. As for daring to question Marx's teaching, I am not alone, and given my background, I could assure possible readers that I am qualified for such a challenge. By the way, I never set myself the task of criticism, but always wanted to find out for myself, why I was not comfortable with this teaching from the very first acquaintance with it at age twenty. Besides, the issue was important for me because implementation of this ideology in the Soviet Union also indirectly affected my life, and the lives of my ancestors and relatives very much, unfortunately in a negative way. To further boost credibility to my study, if it's really possible at all, I can add that I am not only a scientist by mindset, but led many practical technological projects. Also, I have degrees and the title of Professor, although in natural sciences. As everybody else, I might have preconceptions, but I am trying to consciously intercept them, while finding the truth is the main objective of all my studies, however uncomfortable it could be.
   For the sake of completeness, it is necessary to add a few words about Marxism as an ideological doctrine. I first became more or less fully acquainted with historical materialism in my fourth year of study at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. In the first semester, we studied dialectical materialism. There were no problems with the adoption of this teaching. Certain points of secondary importance raised doubts, but after some reflection, they were soon resolved.
   A completely different attitude and perception, or being more precise rather "rejection", or strong doubt, arose in the study of historical materialism. There was a general feeling of unconvincingness, vagueness, artificiality of this subject. I even wrote down exactly what I doubted in, but it didn't go any further. I couldn't offer any alternative explanation of my own. Besides, it was the official ideology of the government of the country, and it was not customary to talk about such doubts.
   Marxism, and the part of it historical materialism, has had a strong impact on humanity. Under its slogans, revolutionaries seized power in several countries, including Russia. The extremist ideology of Marxism was taken up by various kinds of political adventurers-revolutionaries and fanatics, and transformed into an even more extreme form. In Russia into a dictatorial oppressive kind, when the government, composed of the Bolsheviks and the Jewish Communist Party that merged with them at the end of 1923 - beginning of 1924, were physically destroying entire classes of the population under the pretext of their "bourgeois" and "petty-bourgeois"origins, which should not exist in a new society according to the Utopian theory of Marxists. In the article "Calculation of human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War and World War II", proza.ru/2024/03/04/1748, it is estimated that after the Civil War, which ended in 1922, and before the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, 5 million 304 thousand more men died as a result of repressions, than women, that is, the total number of deaths as a result of repressions is equal to this 5 million 304 thousand plus the double number of repressed women, whose numbers were also numerous, but no reliable statistics how many exactly.
   Of course, these people would have committed such atrocities even without Marx's ideology if they got the power, but Marxist ideology certainly made it easier for them to gain and retain that power. So, at least in order to not repeat such terrible crimes hiding behind this ideology, it makes sense to understand what the fundamental errors and fallacies of Marxism are.
   It is definitely not easy to analyze and assess Marxism. The doctrine itself contains fundamental errors that make it wrong to an unacceptable degree; it is impossible to correct these errors without denying the essence of Marxism. On the other hand, Utopian but captivating ideas about a just society attracted many people and encouraged them to become socially active, and in particular to fight against excessive capitalist exploitation. The socialist coups under the banner of Marxism that have taken place in some countries have shown how effective ideologies, even extreme ones like Marxism, can be in transforming societies, and how quickly reforms can be implemented that make life easier for the lower classes. However, saying this, in general, I would estimate the ratio of the results of the implementation of Marxist ideas in the Soviet Union as 50 : 1, where 50 refers to bad results, and 1 to good.
   Surprisingly as it may sound, these are the populations of other countries and of the former USSR republics, which gained much more than the Russian population from the Soviet style socialism. More on that can be found in [2].
  
   Note 2. On the research methodologies of social phenomena. The study of social phenomena is not an easy task, and a variety of methodological approaches are used for this purpose. To understand the issue, we will consider two of them. The first, most common, is when a limited set of propositions or postulates is taken - for example, of some ideological teaching - with the possible addition of homegrown statements that are not necessarily proven, and then a formal logical application of this set of postulates to the problem under study follows. Marxism was created precisely according to this methodology, when some provisions of the Hegelian dialectics were eclectically taken, which were then applied to a certain set of concepts from previous social and economic works (in particular, by A. Saint-Simon, T. Godskin, R. Jones, A. Smith, D. Ricardo), with small original additions.
   The problem with this approach are quite obvious. First, it's easy to miss out on other significant factors at the very beginning. Secondly, the closed nature of the field of analysis, described and limited exclusively by initial assumptions, does not allow for its multilateral verification (which is absolutely mandatory in such matters), using results and methods from other fields of knowledge, as well as validating them on the basis of various known facts, practical knowledge and experience. Indeed, the verification of Marx's ideological theory and its results is extremely difficult. All the propositions are formulated without proof, as if in some isolated capsule, from which there is no way out. It is impossible to get a reasonable answer to any legitimate question. As a result, in fact, everything must be reduced to faith. This fact, the need to believe in Marxism to accept it, is convincingly proved the well-known demagogic statement by Lenin in the article on Marxism: "Marx's teaching is all-powerful because it is true." Why it is true, Lenin never explained anywhere. Somehow, he decided that it was true, and that was all. I think it was because it suited his inherently extremist, destructive nature, which needed an object for destruction - the Russian state that existed in his time. And he was looking for a justification for the necessity and correctness of this destructive action, which he saw in Marx's theory, and a guide to how to do it, which Marxism also suggested.
   The second methodological approach is based on a comprehensive analysis of the studied phenomenon, which also implies studying its connections with other areas of knowledge, and using various methods of analysis, including the ones from other areas where possible. And then, as the conclusions appear, there should be a constant comprehensive cyclic verification of these conclusions, and of the results obtained at each stage of the subsequent approximation and increment of the emerging knowledge. We adhere to the latter approach.
  
   Basic principles of Marxism
  
   Marxism claimed, and still claims, to be a teaching that explains from a scientific point of view the fundamental, real forces and factors that objectively determine the historical development of society. This sentence highlights three key words: "scientific", "objective" and "development". The "scientific character" of Marxism is argued by its supporters that it was created on the basis of philosophical teaching dialectical materialism. However, dialectical materialism, as it was mentioned already, acquired more or less consistent shape only several decades later after introduction of historical materialism by Marx. One can see that in his teaching some sporadically chosen philosophical notions from the Hegelian dialectics were used, but there is no consistent applications of the notions and categories of dialectical materialism, which just did not exist at that time. Certain Hegelian notions later were adopted by dialectical materialism as well, but one thing is using separate notions, and the other is applying consistently developed and validated teaching. When it comes to complex multifaceted issues, they must be simultaneously analyzed by the entire verification apparatus in their entirety. Otherwise, omitting even one meaningful factor can easily jeopardize the whole analysis. Since Marx, Engels and their followers applied only those sporadically chosen concepts of Hegelian dialectics to analysis of historical socioeconomic changes, and provided no validation of obtained results, their findings could unlikely be true. And they were not, given the failure of numerous attempts creating societies based on Marxism provisions. China is called a "communist country", but look how little is left from original Marxism in its ideological and economic politics.
   The "objectivity" of Marxist analysis in the view of Marxists is justified by the declaration that this doctrine operates with material factors, namely with the means of production, production relations. In this case, the reader can see that if the materiality of the means of production should be accepted without objection, then the materiality of the production relations raises doubts. After thinking about it for a moment, one would rather deny them their materiality altogether, quite reasonably objecting that these relations are between people, and even for this reason alone are subjective, and so have to be reflected somehow in the human consciousness and are affected by it. However, at this point the Marxist logic becomes really tricky to justify the premise, namely claiming that production relations are objectively defined, and that they (attention!) exist outside and independently of humans' consciousness, which is in contradiction with the real arrangement we have just discussed above, i. e. residing in human consciousness. Marxists themselves understand vulnerability of such an argumentation, and so later interpretations and explanations of this foundational part of Marxism appeared. In particular, the notion of "subjective-objective being" was introduced [3], to reconcile this contradiction, which made the idea actually even less consistent, and by and large incomprehensible.
   So much about the main premises of Marxism. But these are namely these two claims about independence, and existence of production relations outside the human consciousness, which are the primary foundational blocks of the entire Marxist ideology. And, as we have just seen, this statement is wrong even within the framework used by Marxists. By the way, if one reads the original text, it immediately becomes clear that this is an entirely Hegelian framework, but not of dialectical materialism, which further proves that Marx's historical materialism is (other than by unfounded Marxists' claims) unrelated to dialectical materialism, but originated on the basis of Hegelian philosophy. In fact, Marx even does not use the notion of matter, which is the basis of dialectical materialism, but operates with the Hegel's notion of being, which is not a simple one in Hegelian philosophy. The material meaning of Marx's concepts was rather implied, and this implication was later enforced by Marx's interpreters and followers, pretty much discarding in the process the complexity of Hegelian notion "being", and de facto giving it a different meaning.
   My apologies for this scholastic type excursion, which would hardly be of interest to most readers, but it was important to show the fallacy of Marx's argumentation playing on his home turf.
   "Development" in Marxism necessarily implies a linear, progressive socioeconomic movement, where the previous socioeconomic formation is replaced by a more highly developed one. Such socioeconomic optimism is a beautiful thing in itself, but in real life of societies, on a regular basis, one can meet not only progressive changes, but also regressive, and even degrading ones, such as the destruction of a well-functioning state with a high level of social security, and turning it into a zone of tribal hostility, disenfranchisement and economic degradation. Or the current widespread deterioration of life of populations in Western countries, the increasing stratification of society by material and social status, and the gradual destruction of the middle class.
  
   Disregard of the role of resources in Marxism
  
   The lack of understanding of the role and primary importance of resources in human life leads to the emergence of inadequate socioeconomic theories, including Marxism, when other factors and phenomena are put at the forefront of socioeconomic theories instead of resources. In Marxism, resources as the material basis of people's economic activity were replaced by productive forces (which includes the means of production and people involved in the production) and production relations (that is, relations that develop between people in the production process, and up to the consumption of manufactured things). Note inconsistency of both concepts from the point of view of their materiality and objectivity (that is, existing independently and outside the consciousness of people). In the previous, we began discussion of these concepts. Below, we will continue doing this, but this time from a somewhat different perspective.
   The means of production and the people who use them are material. But Marxism puts more into the concept of productive forces, namely: "Productive forces - a set of means of production and people engaged in production, a system of subjective (human) and material elements that carry out the "exchange of substances" between man and nature in the process of socioeconomic production. Productive forces express the active attitude of people to nature, which consists in the material and spiritual development and development of its riches, during which the conditions of human existence are reproduced and the process of formation and development of man himself is accelerated within the framework of changing socioeconomic formations." [4].
   As follows from the above quote, productive forces by definition include the subjective factor, that is, people's thoughts, knowledge, attitudes, and actions. But then, in fact, according to this definition, the productive forces in the sense of their objectivity (in the philosophical sense of the word) in principle cannot exist independently of people, and even more so cannot exist outside of their consciousness. But this is exactly the opposite of what Marxism claims. That is, one way or another, subjectivity creeps into the Marxist concept of productive forces.
   The second fundamental concept of Marxism, like the first one, was also borrowed from the works of previous economists, is the production relations. They are defined as follows: "Production relations - a set of material, independent of the consciousness of people, economic relations that people enter into with each other in the process of socioeconomic production and the movement of the societal product from production to consumption. Production relations are a necessary aspect of social production." [3]. The original Marx's and Engels' thought is as follows [4]: "In production, people enter into relationships not only with nature. They cannot produce without combining in a certain way for joint activity and for the mutual exchange of their activities. In order to produce, people enter into certain connections and relationships, and only within the framework of these social connections and relationships does their relationship to nature exist, and production takes place", which is quoted in [5].
   Although the notion of productive forces still include the means of production, that is, material things as part of the concept, then the concept of production relations is entirely devoid of material content; it is a purely ideal concept. Moreover, the description of people's activities within the framework of the productive forces strongly overlaps with the description of production relations, so that it is impossible to make any clear distinction between them.
   As a result, it turns out that statements about the objectivity, and even more so the materiality of both cornerstone concepts of Marxism, are nothing more than unfounded declaration. But it means that the use of these concepts for subsequent conclusions is not warranted. It is clear that any construction based on false premises is unlikely to give true conclusions.
   At the same time, neither Marx himself nor his followers speak directly about the materiality of these concepts, apparently understanding their groundlessness. Instead, they introduce objective being, which in their view implies materiality, by identifying their notion of "being" as related to material world. Here is an example of such a juggling of concepts from the book by the philosopher (in many other aspects a good one) Y. I. Semyonov [3]: "K. Marx, proceeding from the materialist tradition, called the objective social being discovered by him simply "social being", thereby emphasizing its primacy in relation to social consciousness." The fact is that "social" by definition can only be subjective, since it can manifest itself only through the consciousness and subconsciousness of people. But then it can't be purely objective. Period. Of course, this subjective perception is also influenced by the objective reality associated with societal relations, but this is only a part of many influencing factors, and it seems unreasonable to take only this part as the primary one, which determines social ideas and social behavior of people in general. By and large, there would be nothing more to talk about if one adheres to the logic of common sense. However, Marxists continue further verbal juggling to justify their doubtful provisions. Realizing that despite all the subterfuges, their premises still look dubious, since relations between people depend on people themselves, Marxists try to make some concession to common sense, and add "subjective-objective being" [3], which we previously mentioned. This addition confuses the whole concept now entirely, so that one finally can hardly make any meaning of it.
   The described Marxist approach to me looks as demagogue and distortion, but it may not be deliberate falsification - it's just that when people believe very strongly in their ideas, they begin to unconsciously adjust and distort any arguments to prove their beliefs.
   The following argument can also be adduced to justify the Marxists. Well, they are not material and not objective concepts, although Marxists claim this, but is it so important? Maybe the conclusions were correct after all? No. The conclusions were wrong. Many proofs can be presented, including the practice of applying the Marxist doctrine for a hundred and fifty years, which has convincingly refuted all the main propositions of Marxism, the primary of which is the necessary, inevitable change of socioeconomic formations to more progressive ones, and in particular the socioeconomic utopia about the proletarian ownership of the means of production, which has never been implemented in any country, and could not be implemented in principle. This is because if someone has to manage the production process, that would immediately mean that such a person would have a greater degree of control over resources, and therefore by default acquires a privileged social position, which inevitably transforms into a better financial situation, and therefore eventually this would lead to the formation of a qualitatively different socioeconomic class of managers, originated from ordinary workers.
   In general, it is not difficult to point out the mistakes and errors of Marx and his followers. It is difficult to conduct a detailed analysis of these errors because of the verbiage, multi-layered demagoguery and unsubstantiated statements that accompany the fundamental propositions and forecasts of Marx and Marxists.
  
   The significance of the materialist philosophical view for the analysis of socioeconomic phenomena
  
   At the end of this section, we will try to explain why so much attention is paid to the materiality of resources, and to analysis of their connection with matter as such, understood in a general philosophical sense. There are at least three reasons. First, the world is material in principle, and this can be considered as an established scientific fact. Nothing supernatural exists. And not only because it is unknown to science, but this view is confirmed by numerous other facts, and by the entire history of the development of real science. For example, such a particular argument as an illustration. To find out about something, we need to get information. There are no intangible forms of information transferring. You can, of course, imagine that there is, but this will no longer be a scientific approach, whereas we are trying to conduct research in a scientific framework, which involves using concepts whose truth is accepted by the scientific community.
   Secondly, we conduct an analysis based largely on common sense, the scientific generalization of which is dialectical materialism.
   Third, Marxism, its ideological doctrine that we analyze - as an example of erroneous analysis and dangerous delusions for humanity - declares that it is based on dialectical materialism, although at the time of the creation of Marxism dialectical materialism as a philosophical doctrine did not yet exist, and only some propositions from Hegel's dialectics were used, reformulated in a supposed materialistic way. Unfortunately, they were often reformulated haphazardly, and presented without evidence. And whether because of this, or because Marx and Engels did not care about the validity of such propositions, and they simply adjusted them to their preconceived ideas, to the conclusions that they wanted to get, but with unbiased reading of their arguments one cannot help but feels entanglement of their arguments, which sound more like incantations than scientific conclusions.
   It may seem to some that this statement unfairly belittles the role of Marxist ideology and its founders, given how much Marxism was promoted in its time, and still remains popular. However, this is not an unsubstantiated statement, and in the course of the following presentation, the relevant provisions of Marxism will be given, which can hardly be called anything but spells.
   So, at this point, the reader should gain an understanding of the material basis of our approach, that is, the material resources and their derivatives necessary for the life of an individual and human communities. In this sense, as it will be seen below, this basis is much more material and objective than the productive forces and production relations on which Marxism is based.
  
   Acquisition and distribution of resources as the basis of human life
  
   Fig. 2 shows a diagram of the acquisition and subsequent distribution of resources among various socioeconomic classes, including the classes of wage workers (1), owners of means of production, who can themselves hire workers, owners or managers of businesses, landowners, financiers (2), and the class of civil servants, members of governments (3) - that is of people who receive their living means directly from the public funds. Of course, in some cases it is possible to use a more detailed representation of socioeconomic classes, for example, to single out the class of landowners, unproductive class of bankers, but for our purposes this is not of importance, and is not necessary. Now, it is important for us to identify groups, classes, whose interests are antagonistic in terms of the distribution of resources obtained by the whole society, when each of these groups seeks to get the largest possible share of the total societal resources. Thus, the SEC (2) is interested in increasing the profit of its enterprises, or land rents, or, like financiers, loan payments, while wage workers seek to increase wages, which will reduce the profit of the SEC (2).
  
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Fig. 2. Scheme of acquisition and distribution of resources by various socioeconomic classes (SEC). Bold dotted lines with bumps at the ends show the moving boundaries of resource allocations that the corresponding classes want to increase in its favor.
  
   The assessment of how much each socioeconomic class has contributed to the acquisition of shared resources may be based on different approaches, and therefore significantly differ depending on the approach. Nevertheless, such fairly reliable economic estimates can be made. For example, one can use the total working time spent, multiplied by weighting factors that reflect the required skill level to perform the job. It is more difficult to take into account, for example how much land owners, bankers and other rentiers contributed to resources acquisition, but such estimations are also possible. In any case, for our study, this question is irrelevant and does not affect the results in any way.
   The contribution of different classes to resource acquisition is not equal to the share of resources received by these classes, which is reflected in the diagram in Fig. 2 by different heights of the corresponding shaded rectangles. There are various reasons for this, but they mostly boil down to the fact that, say, the more affluent class (2) has much more administrative, political and legislative power to redistribute the commonly acquired and produced resources in its favor. For example, with high unemployment, they can reduce labor wages, push through the government favorable for them laws to reduce taxes on businesses or financiers' incomes, seek government subsidies for the development of certain projects, and so on - in this sense, the widest gates of opportunities are open for them.
   On the other hand, salaried workers have fewer opportunities to increase their income. Trade unions do not include all labor. Besides, they are not always active in protecting labor interests. It is not a secret that trade union leaders are often bribed by business owners, and in fact can act against ordinary trade union members. For more details on the mechanisms and methods used by different socioeconomic classes to change the distribution of resources in their favor see [2, 6].
   The proposed scheme makes it easy to take into account additional income received by members of different classes due to the redistribution of resources by government agencies and various institutions. For example, someone may receive additional social benefits from the public funds. Some people, such as pensioners or the disabled, can only consume resources without contributing to their acquisition. All this can be accounted for integrally by the height of the shaded rectangles, each of which, in turn, can be further divided into more detailed strata of income and expenditures.
  
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   Fig. 3. Scheme of obtaining and distributing resources in a primate pack.
  
   The main value of the presented scheme is that it describes a fundamental socioeconomic structure of society's activity at any stage of its development. Moreover, it can also be used to describe the acquisition and distribution of resources among animal groups, such as packs of primates. And this is not a minor point. After all, people are also gregarious, social animals (remember the words of Aristotle that man is a social animal), most of whose actions are dictated by the same or similar instincts as in animals. Therefore, it is quite natural to expect that the proposed scheme could also describe the social behavior of its ancestors (which are not so far away in reality), related to the distribution of material resources. Indeed, if one redraws the diagram in Fig. 2 for primates, Fig. 3, it will be very similar.
   In primates' packs, such as chimpanzees, the social and material hierarchy of pack members is clearly defined, with the alpha male taking the best bite, while firmly and aggressively stopping all attempts by other chimpanzees to encroach on its right won in the struggle. Members of a pack with a low social status will also work more and harder, by the way, putting more effort into getting food when, say, they join together for a common hunt. Alpha females behave similarly to other female chimpanzees at lower social levels. Accordingly, the offspring of females also receive food and a place "by rank".
  
   Similarity of historical socioeconomic systems
  
   In fact, we observe the same structural organization of human societies, which is an additional confirmation that the structural basis of life of humans is the acquisition and distribution of resources. Generally speaking, this assertion, if one thinks for a moment, seems obvious (like all true things, when they were already discovered). And yet, so many people prefer complicated, dubious socioeconomic theories like Marxism, even though the truth is almost on the surface.
   The scheme for primitive-communal societies looks almost like in Fig. 3 for primates. There was not a trace of the primitive communism that Marx and Engels spoke of in their works. What is even more important, it could not have been in principle. Why? There are several reasons. For example, without a hierarchical system based on the struggle for the social and material status, such a communist society simply could not exist, since with an equal distribution of resources, many natural incentives for full-fledged life and development would disappear. The fact that there were blood relations within the community does not change matters - competition between relatives has always been a normal phenomenon. It is also important to note that a society that was not structured hierarchically could not be administratively managed, while the main and most effective basis for creating such a hierarchy was a fight for social status. And it was precisely such an aggressive fight which was one of the most effective means for this; although, of course, not the only one, as the same example of primates or human communities shows, in which sycophants can also get along well in life.
   The system was rigid, strictly hierarchical, and everyone fought for their social and material status in the tribal hierarchy, putting all their strength and using all available means. This internal struggle helped to maintain the constant activity and capacity of society, to constantly renew and strengthen its structure, from which the external activity of the tribe, aimed at joint extraction of resources, and the protection of common interests, also benefited. The latter consideration may not be obvious. Indeed, putting too much effort into internal struggles can undermine the structure and organization of society and its capacity for action, and ultimately destroy it - there are many such examples, Byzantine is one of them. However, when such competition is conducted in moderation, not exceeding a certain destructive threshold, on the contrary, it helps the society to remain capable.
   Another argument can be made that calls into question the possibility of existence of a primitive communist society. The struggle for the social and material status is an established fact in primate flocks, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, and socialist societies. There are no objective reasons why it should be different in a primitive communal society.
  
   The struggle for social and economic status in socialist societies
  
   The main idea of a socialist society is subordination of ideological, political and economic activities of society and state administration to the social and material interests of the majority of the population. This idea has been implemented to varying degrees in different societies and countries. Examples of countries with a noticeable influence of socialist ideas on domestic politics can be found in the Scandinavian countries, especially forty years ago. Certain socially oriented policies can be observed in some European countries. Thirty years ago, Canada retained the remnants of a once-present social policy, which have since been essentially dismantled.
   However, for our purposes, it makes sense to consider the extreme form of socialism closest to the Marxian provisions, that existed in the Soviet Union. In this case, despite declarations and even certain efforts to equalize society, a transformation of the supposedly equal society to a hierarchical system is clearly visible; in fact, almost to the same structure as shown in Fig. 2 for a capitalist economic system, with the only difference that instead of socioeconomic classes (2) there were class of managers who controlled the industry, agriculture, and the class of high-ranking party bureaucrats and officials, who in turn controlled these managers.
   As a result, in fact, there were socioeconomic classes of wage workers, labor (1), both in industry and in agriculture, a class of managers (2), who managed and controlled industrial and agricultural enterprises, a class of civil servants (3), who worked in state and party management bodies, and a class of party officials. bureaucracy and top-level government officials (4) (these two categories may overlap). The class (5) of cultural figures, mass media, and highly paid workers who serve the ideology and politics of the ruling class, and therefore are usually well-fed by the authorities, stood apart. Accordingly, the material standard of living of these classes differed significantly, qualitatively, as well as the way of life and opportunities for purchasing various goods, obtaining housing, traveling domestically and abroad, recreation in resorts, entertainment, education, cultural and professional growth, and so on - in other words, in all spheres of life.
   The stratification of society began from the very first days of the Bolsheviks' rule, and only continued to increase after the civil war. The former classes of capitalists and landlords were liquidated, but, as they say, a holy place never stays empty, and the place of those classes was immediately taken by the party and state leaders and their relatives and acquaintances. At the same time, segregation began in other strata of society, where many people having ambitions and sufficient energy sought to take a step higher in the social and material hierarchy. And, it couldn't have been otherwise. These are people. People are basically not equal in all their physical, mental and other characteristics and qualities, in the level of knowledge and professional skills and abilities. They perform different jobs, in different environments, in different geographical areas and regions, in urban and rural settings, in mountains, on a fertile plain, in the desert, and so on. Everyone has different opportunities, abilities, different relatives, acquaintances, views on everything and about anything. And, of course, as a result of these differences, all people should have different social and material status, no matter how they are forced to comply to universal equality in everything. Moreover, the very nature of a person, the original instincts and motivations are tied precisely to achieving a higher social and material status. Trying to equalize people more than it is predetermined by their natural and acquired differences, this is obviously going against human nature (assuming a normal degree of advantages due to these differences, since there are also pathological cases when a person claims more than deserves),
   The dominance of Marxism as of an official government ideology in the Soviet Union forced the government to retouch reality in every possible way with the help of mass propaganda, and even take certain measures to contain the stratification of society. However, such efforts did not change the general trend. Nevertheless, before Khrushchev came to power, the country's ideological base remained sufficiently strong, and the necessary critical mass of people shared it. The situation began to change dramatically with the coming of Khrushchev, who with his unwise actions began destroying the socialist ideology of the Soviet flavor. Accordingly, the growing divergence between the official "proletarian" ideology of Marxism and the real state of affairs destroyed this official ideology in the eyes of the people, and it was quickly replaced by the ideology of Western capitalist society, which was carried out, among other agents, by part of the ruling elite and a considerable part of the intelligentsia. Both of these social classes were quickly imbued with pro-Western sentiments, the consciousness of which was also purposefully influenced by Western special agencies and secret services, making not unsuccessful attempts organizing the "fifth column".
  
   Note 3. Was the destruction of the Soviet Union inevitable? Although we do not need to go into a more detailed description of the processes that were then destroying the country, it still will be instructive to provide a small digression to answer the question that is often asked - was it possible to save the country from destruction? The answer is: based on that Marxist ideology, definitely not. However, with the gradual evolution of both the ideology of society and a more optimal economic structure, the country could without doubt be transformed almost painlessly, ideologically and economically, into a prosperous, socially oriented society, with a sufficient share of small and medium-sized private entrepreneurship, collective enterprises in various forms, and state-owned enterprises, especially large ones. The existing strict state regulation of anything and everything, at all levels, would have to be relaxed, and many local management, planning and decision-making functions would have to be delegated to the appropriate local levels.
   In order to preserve the social orientation of the country's economy, it is imperative that all measures would have to be taken, including legislation up to criminal penalties, as well as economic laws, regulations, social, ideological and propaganda measures, and all other morally acceptable ways and influence (if only the situation can be resolved this way) to prevent the possibility of emergence of large fortunes controlled by one person or a small group. What "large" means, depends on the specific situation and the country, but in any case, such fortunes should not exceed the equivalent of today's (2025) one to two hundred million US dollars. The reasons for the appearance of such an estimate are described in [2, 6]. In short, the need for such restrictions relates to the fact that economically socially oriented states can exist only without large fortunes. Allowing to acquire large fortunes means that at least half of the population, 50%, has to be dead poor, the next 40% also has to be robbed, although to a lesser degree than the first 50%. Otherwise, there is no way for the large fortunes to be accumulated - to earn, what most people understand by this word, large fortunes is impossible in principle without robbing the rest of population, as it is shown in [2, 6].
   And one last thing. No society, in principle, can remain socially oriented for a long time if there is no significant share of local self-governance and active control by the population itself, for which people need to be trained and given the opportunity to practically master, apply and improve the skills and the system of people's control and governance of the country. The monopoly of power always ends badly in the long run (and often earlier). The widest participation of population in self-governance, provided it was trained to the adequate level, is the only way to ensure stability and continuity of the country's development. Stalin - although very much in his own way - was a good leader for that country. But Stalin was (almost surely) killed, another loyal leader, L. P. Beria, was killed, the criminal Khrushchev came to power, and all political and economical policies, the entire course of the country's historical and economic development was sharply turned; if not backwards, then in the very different direction for sure. And all these catastrophic things happened because the people could only listen, but not speak, and all the important affairs of the country were completely decided by Stalin and his inner circle.
  
   For our purposes, it is important to note two facts. First, this is the immediate start of stratification of society, despite all the declarations and even a sincere desire of some revolutionaries to put the ideas of Marx and Lenin into practice. The stratification that began was not just a mistake in the construction of socialism in its concrete implementation. No, it was a fundamental, principal flaw of Marxism as a social-political teaching, which was not taken into account by Marxist theorists. From the very first days of the Bolsheviks' power, it was clearly demonstrated that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to remake deep human nature, and that one of the main socio-biological features, the main engine of people's activity, their main motivation is the desire for a higher social and material status, or at least its preservation. Secondly, one should pay attention to the fact that one of the reasons of the problems that arose in the Soviet Union was the discrepancy between the real class structure of the society, and the one declared by Marxist ideology.
  
   Defining socioeconomic classes
  
   Socioeconomic classes were introduced (discovered) not by Marxists. But the definition of classes as groups of people who differ in their place in the historically defined system of socioeconomic production, in their relation to the means of production, is a Marxists' definition of classes. The main attention is focused on the premise that it is precisely the attitude to the means of production that forms a certain class.
   However, one can see that this definition applies only to the capitalist mode of production, and even then with a stretch, while for the slaveholding, feudal, primitive-communal, Asian socioeconomic formations, this approach to understanding socioeconomic classes raises many questions, to which this definition does not provide satisfactory answers. Thus, the means of production, especially tools, agricultural equipment, warehouses, workshops, etc., often did not belong to the land owner. The feudal lord's vassals have essentially leased land, and their own inventory, tools, and draft cattle. And the very institution of land ownership has changed significantly over time, from communal land (and this form was in different countries), and through intermediate forms to the complete expropriation of land holdings in favor of large landowners (recall "enclosures" in England). Construction companies in many parts of Canada require workers to come with their own tools, and previously it was supposed to be this way only.
   In Russia, during the period of serfdom, actually there were more peasants and all Cossacks who were free. Thus, the socioeconomic formation could not be unequivocally qualified as feudal or slaveholding; the economic arrangements were mixed. This phenomenon was widespread in many countries. By and large, the means of production were at the same technological level in ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, and later in Russia and the East, but the socioeconomic formations were different. At the same time, according to Marxism, the transition from one socioeconomic formation should be initiated by a conflict between the productive forces, which include people and the means of production, and the production relationships. But neither one nor the other changed, while the replacement of formations occurred nevertheless. And there are many more such questions Marx's ideological theory has no answers.
   Let's take a closer look at what exactly are socioeconomic classes? Classes (perhaps for the first time) were identified in the works of economists A. Smith and D. Ricardo, who developed the labor theory of value, and discovered (or formulated) the market law of value as a "regulator, coordinator and engine of social production" [7]. But unlike the Marxists, they focused on the distribution of national income (for D. Ricardo, this was the main topic around which he built his research). Once again, we emphasize that their work deals with the distribution of income, or, in our terms, with the distribution of all resources obtained. As a result of analyzing this distribution (and nothing else!) they discovered the classes into which capitalist society was divided. Smith wrote that "... the whole price of this annual product ... is divided into three parts: the rent of land, the wages of labor, and the profit of capital, and constitutes the income of three different classes of the people: those who live on rent, and those who live on wages, and those who live on the profits of capital. These are the three main and primary classes in every civilized society, from whose income the income of every other class is ultimately derived." [7].
   A similar point of view is expressed by D. Ricardo: "The product of the land - everything that is obtained from its surface by the combined application of labor, machinery and capital - is divided (italics by Y. S.) between three classes of society, namely: owners of land, owners of money or capital necessary for its cultivation, and workers, labor where it is processed." [8]. That is, again, as A. Smith, and what I propose too, we are talking about "division", that is distribution.
   Both A. Smith and D. Ricardo noted the role of factors of production used to generate income - ownership of land, ownership of capital (means of production), and the labor that workers who received wages could offer. All these factors are important, not just the labor of the workers, which for some reason Marxists absolutized, and then (or because of that?) they attributed to the working class an absolutely uncharacteristic role as a revolutionary transformer of society, which even with the most profound and deep analysis cannot be attributed to any particular reason. Well, the workers can rebel, without much sense, when they are completely pinned down and mercilessly exploited by the capitalists, thus bringing people to an animal state. They can pointlessly break down factory machines in the heat of the moment, or make some economic demands through the trade union, or go on strike. And this is probably all the "revolutionary" activities available at their level. In principle, they cannot comprehend anything more than a specific professional activity in a factory, or work on a farm can give them - there are absolutely no prerequisites for this.
   Everything else is a fantasy of the Marxists' imagination that is inadequate and out of touch with reality, including the claims about the role of workers as an advanced class that will take power in its calloused hands and take away the capitalists' means of production, factories and plants, and then somehow miraculously will be able to manage all this itself, while remaining workers, but not stratifying immediately onto new ordinary workers, bureaucrats, highly qualified technical specialists, managers (in fact, new owners of the same factories and plants). All these fantasies, invented from scratch by Marx, are coming from the void, but not from the real world. It was made up simply because he really wanted to think so. Apparently, he liked the fairy tale he had invented so much that he began to drive reality into its Procrustean bed, without even trying to somehow measure it with the real people. If Marx, a descendant of the rabbis, had followed the path of his ancestors, such an inadequate way of thinking would not have brought much trouble. Unfortunately, he used the same approaches to describe the real world, which, unfortunately, he never learned, as evidenced, for example, by his inability to provide even food for his family, not to mention many facts of his life and activities, which even more openly reveal his impracticality and inability to understand the nature of people and of the real society. So, apart from Marx's fervent desire to confirm his dubious ideas, it is difficult to see anything else behind these fabrications. Not only there is no scientific analysis in the above provisions, but there are visible problems even with the common sense.
   Saying such a thing about Marx's ideas would be considered sacrilege, but we are not criticizing religion, which for some people Marx's ideology is, but trying to find the truth, namely, what fundamental factors determine the socioeconomic development of human societies. The explanation offered by Marx, after so many years of attempts to implement it has shown its fallacy. So we're looking for something else.
  
   Now, having gained an idea of the opinions of classical economists, let's move to discussing the definition of classes. This is an important, and even key concept in political economy, so it is crucial to define it correctly. We have already mentioned the disastrous consequences of Marxist approaches in this regard for millions of people who were killed by bloodthirsty revolutionaries under the pretext of class struggle (even though in many instances they pursued other goals, like ethnic cleansing of native populations), and many more had their lives mangled and broken.
   Here is the disposition. Marxists define classes as groups of people who differ in their attitude to the means of production. Wage workers do not own the means of production. Capitalists own. Landlords and feudal lords owned land. Such is the initial alignment. But now let all these parts begin interacting in a complex and not in a straightforward way, with many feedback loops and participation of many other players, among which governments and state governing bodies and institutions of different levels also play an important role. What kind of wages labor could receive, or what profits capitalists will gain based on their class affiliation before the end of this complex process of production and management, no one could know, in principle. It is only when all these parts has worked together and produced results - that is when resources of different types were obtained and then were distributed, it is only then we can talk about wages, rents, and profits of different classes. Or, to put it in another way, we want to say that classes are not defined only by how they relate to the means that they can use to get resources, but also how, and what share of the total jointly produced resources each class receives at the end.
   Now recall the thoughts by A. Smith and D. Ricardo on this topic we cited above - after all, they also associate the concept of classes precisely with the distribution of the produced product. The connection of classes with the means of production is also present in their vision, and this fact is obvious in itself, but in relation to the definition of the concept of a class, these factors are secondary for them, as this can be directly seen from the above quotations.
   My previous similar considerations, and their agreement with the results of works of classical economists, as well as a detailed analysis of the problematic issues in the Marxist definition of classes seem to be quite convincing evidence that the definition of classes in Marx ideology is at least inaccurate. Based on the above, it is more appropriate to link the definition of socioeconomic classes to the distribution of commonly produced resources, as follows:
  
   Socioeconomic class is determined mainly by the share of the total produced and acquired resources a certain group of people ultimately receives and controls, and what is the average income and wealth per person in such a group. The second criterion for determining the class is the absence of antagonistic contradictions, conflicts within the group. The third important criteria, influencing the overall socioeconomic well-being of a society is either this is productive or unproductive activity.
  
   This example will help us understanding why one criterion of financial standing is not enough. Let's say that workers at a large enterprise have organized a strike, demanding an increase in wages. Let's assume that a mid-level manager there gets about the same salary as a highly qualified worker, which is realistic. Nevertheless, the manager will not share class solidarity with the workers. He represents the interests of the company's owners, and that's what he was hired to do. Manager's task is to increase the profit of the enterprise, including increase in exploitation of workers and reducing their wages. As a result, in this conflict, the manager will be on the side of the owners, not the workers, because such managers as groups of people will have interests that are antagonistic, opposite to the interests of workers.
   Similarly, the income of people doing productive work (say producing cars in the factory) and an unproductive one (like in a financial sector) can be similar. However, the produced value and accordingly the impact on the societal well-being are very different. In the first case, the workers produce useful tangible material value, while in the second case they produce very little, or no value at all, and even such activity can be counter-productive, impeding the functioning of the productive sector. Since the second group extracts value produced by the productive group, the interests of these two groups in essence are antagonistic. And the distribution of income and wealth between these two groups strongly affects the socioeconomic well-being and progress of the whole society. If the financial sector gains an upper hand, then the overall societal condition is objectively doomed to deteriorate, since the production sector will be put down, while increased production of material value generally improves the societal well-being. Thus, this criteria (productive activity versus unproductive one) is of importance in class definition too, since the composition of classes, defined this way, will be closely tied to the distribution of produced value between productive and unproductive (and counter-productive) classes, and consequently will be a good objective indicator of the overall well-being of the society.
  
   The concept of a class is not simple. The most understandable, visible, and defining thing for a class is the amount of income and wealth per person. Of course, belonging to a certain socioeconomic class is also influenced by other factors, such as the absence of antagonistic contradictions between members of the class, but the material wealth is the main factor that determines what kind of lifestyle people lead, in what social environment their life takes place and their social personality is formed and determined. Readers themselves can give examples from personal experience, when a decrease in income, or vice versa, its noticeable increase, changed the social status of people belonging to a class. This happens especially quickly when incomes decrease, while entry into the more affluent classes may require meeting other criteria, and national specifics is also often of considerable importance.
   Fig. 4 below (from the author's work [2, 6], here [6] is the Russian version) shows a graph of dependence of world income and wealth by population group in 2021. The straight regression line for income represents a more optimal distribution of income and wealth than the existing one. A similar regression line can be constructed for the distribution of wealth. (A straight regression line also describes the distribution of the amount of nutrients in mammals and microorganisms as a function of mass, and it was noted in [2, 6] that the closer the real distribution is to such a straight line, the more people are better off in such countries.) We can see that approximately 50% of the population (group 1) are, so to speak, at the bottom; they barely have enough to meet the ends, live from paycheck to paycheck, there is nothing left in stock, many are simply malnourished. The next 40% of the population (group 2) live better, although they also receive significantly less compared to the income and wealth determined by the corresponding regression lines. This is followed by the well-off 9% (Group 3) - highly paid employees, small business owners, whose wealth and income grow almost linearly within the group.
  
   0x08 graphic
  
  
   Fig. 4. Dependence of the distribution of income and wealth by population groups in logarithmic coordinates. The dashed line shows wealth, the solid line - income. A regression line is drawn between points 3-4 for income. Percentages represent the proportion of the population receiving the corresponding income and wealth (plotted on the y-axis).
  
   The next group of 0.9% (group 4) is much richer, which gives them a qualitatively better standard of living. The last 0.1% group (Group 5) includes the rich and very rich, and this in turn provides them with the next level of qualitatively different opportunities than in the previous group. Within the 0.1% group, as income and wealth increase, the growth of the latter accelerates rapidly and non-linearly. Note that this acceleration (the upward bending of the income and wealth curves) occurs in logarithmic coordinates, which represents a very rapid increase in the original income and wealth figures, and clearly illustrates that the more money the rich have, the more and faster this money brings them new wealth.
   The groups described above based on material resources correlate well with belonging to socioeconomic classes, which confirms that financial status is a determining factor, to which social class a person belongs to. An additional noticeable differentiation occurs among the top 0.1%, in which there is a rapid increase in wealth, which accordingly leads to rapid qualitative changes in social status within this class, as more money buys more power, which is again converted into money, and so a chain of positive feedback loops with self-arousal originates, to use a technical analogy.
   Even without a detailed analysis, which was done in [2, 6], if we consider the regression lines as benchmarks for optimal inequality (which is a reasonable assumption, as it follows from these works), then it is easy to see from the graph that the lower 50% group is stripped off income and wealth by the upper 10%, and especially by upper 0.1%. The next 40% are also deprived of income and wealth by the top 10%, but they are left more, and so small savings are appearing in this group. So, with a high degree of confidence, we can talk about antagonistic contradictions between the lower two and the upper three groups. At the same time, Class 3 members, mostly owners of small and medium-sized businesses, are under pressure from large monopolistic corporations, which reduces their profits and can lead to ruin, as it happened during pandemic and after pandemic, when many small businesses did survive. So we can also talk about certain antagonistic contradictions between the 3rd and 5th socioeconomic classes, as well as between the 4th and 5th.
   Note that we have quite accurately localized the boundaries of socioeconomic classes and conducted a preliminary analysis for the antagonism of their core interests based on only one characteristic - distribution of the total material product of the society between these classes. At the same time, we did not need at all the attitude of these classes to the means of production, which Marxism provisions would require. If such a fantasy came to our mind, it is guaranteed to only confuse the matter.
  
   It should be noted that within each social group, people also may compete for a higher social and material status. It is clear that in the lower socioeconomic group they do not think about competing with millionaires, but a hundred dollars more monthly salary than the sister's husband can already be a source of pride, give a sense of deep satisfaction with life and increased self-esteem. Everything is relative. But this competition is not antagonistic in nature, unlike class contradictions.
   The same intra-class competition and struggle takes place in the upper classes. However, the stakes are higher there, it is often not only about the money, but also about the power, and accordingly the means of struggle become more sophisticated and tough, even to the point of cruelty. For example, to ruin a competitor's company, spread unseemly rumors about another company and its owners, or discredit their reputation through the media, using stories fabricated by bribed or even salaried journalists. We can also talk about assassinations, as it became a widespread practice in capitalist Russia and former USSR republics after the coup of 1991, blackmail, bribing officials to commit reprisals, using state power structures, and so on - the set of tools is limited only by imagination, but not by morality.
  
   Example of defining socioeconomic classes and consequences of mistakes
  
   Let's take a closer look at the segment of population that earns a living by waged labor, say in the second, 40% category of the population. Most people employed in this category receive comparable salaries. But other categories of people can have the same order of earnings and incomes, both working (for example, small entrepreneurs, small farmers, peasants) and non-working (for example, those who live on interest, pensioners from more affluent groups - former highly paid technical specialists, university professors).
   According to Marxist ideology, the workers in production factories constitute one advanced class (the proletariat), while the small farmers and peasants constitute another, non-advanced "petty-bourgeois" class (the peasant with a single horse was the "petty bourgeois" according to Marxists). This second-rate "petty-bourgeois" class was alien to the advanced proletarian ideology and socioeconomic progress, and therefore had to be considered backward in this sense (which still has to grow to a consciousness' level of the proletariat). However, the income was of the same order for workers, peasants, small entrepreneurs and some other categories of the population, and accordingly the material and, as a result, the social status of all of them was approximately the same.
   One can, of course, artificially impose privileges on certain groups based on ideological motives, which was done, for example, in the Soviet Union, or is presently self-imposed by the riches in the capitalist countries. However, such structures are not viable, as life has shown, and devoid of artificial support, they immediately crumble. It is certainly necessary to strive for a better life, and the use of considerations guided by reason could be helpful in this. But at the same time, first of all, it is necessary to take into account the real nature of man (which is largely still based on instincts but not the reason), and not to try to break its spine-cord to fit it into a steel form which it does not correspond to. But this is exactly what Marxists in the Soviet Union did when, without any reason, based on Marx's guidelines took the proletariat as a model of progress in social development and consciousness, and subordinated all the other "backward" classes to supposedly its leading role (although there were very few proletariat representatives in the Bolsheviks' government, occupying insignificant positions).
   Marx gave some reasons about the original, innate advantages of the proletariat for the purposes of social revolutions, but if we look at the subject sensibly, taking into account the real human nature, none of them can stand up to criticism, as well as the very idea of a proletarian revolution. We have already discussed that such destructive measures do not lead to anything good, and as a result, the nature of man will return everything back to a hierarchical arrangement, which is due to the inherent inequality of people, in all possible characteristics, and the need to perform different functions by different people in human society. Immediately stratification begins, and instead of the former upper class a new one is formed, which is usually worse than the old one; and instead of the former lower subordinate classes, new subordinate classes appear. Which ones, depends on the specific conditions.
   As a result, the Marxists put different groups of people against each other, such as workers and peasants, workers and small entrepreneurs, poor peasants and slightly wealthier ones. Note that these groups of people did not have antagonistic interests, that is when the interests of one group are fundamentally satisfied at the expense of the interests of another group, as for example in the case of class of capitalists and labor, when capitalists are interested in increasing profits by reducing workers' wages. Everyone went about their own business, no one robbed anyone, everyone had an income of the same order. In a stable society, respectively, they would have approximately the same social status. But Marxist ideology gave the proletariat a special privilege, and the new government, which practically did not include workers, proletariat (!), immediately began to exploit this approach, dividing society into different groups and contrasting them. Intentionally or not, the result was the implementation of the old principle "divide, conquer and rule", and the new government began exploiting all these groups, including the proletariat. Those who did not want to submit to such a policy were declared as a "reactionary classes", and were subject to oppression and physical destruction. Such a free Marxist interpretation of the concept of a socioeconomic class led to "aggravation of the class struggle" (a popular slogan of those years), which in fact was a cover for the struggle of the authorities against all those who were, or could be, dissatisfied with its actions. And it gave a lot of reasons for dissatisfaction. However, Marxist class approach gave the authorities an indulgence for terrorizing entire strata of the population.
  
   The use of the Marxist definition of classes in practice only worsened the situation of people and provoked their mutual hostility - instead of the promised social harmony and the abandoning of capitalist exploitation. Such a ruinous effect was due to both the thoughtless application of this provision of Marxism, and to the intentional pitting of various strata of the population in order to strengthen the power of the Bolsheviks under the guise of Marxist ideology.
   Which approach would be more correct then? We have proposed three criteria. The first is the same order of material well being and, usually as a result, approximately the same social status. Graphs of the distribution of income and wealth shown in Fig. 4, and the accompanying reasoning, further confirm the feasibility and adequacy of this approach.
   The second criterion is the absence of antagonistic interests within such a class. However, in the second case, it should be noted that the policy of the authorities, or changes in the situation in the country for other reasons, can introduce antagonistic contradictions within the class, intentionally or thoughtlessly (for example, by providing unjustified advantages to one part of the class at the expense of another), and thereby set such groups against each other. In this sense, the concept of class is not fixed, and can change depending on the specific political, social and economic situation. However, each time it is necessary to understand the reasons why such changes in the class composition occur, and to assess the degree of contradictions and antagonism between different groups.
   The third criteria was accounting for whether the group is involved into a productive activity, or into an unproductive one, since unproductive groups implicitly or explicitly consume resources produced by productive sectors, thus depriving those groups the income and wealth they earned. Thus, the productive and unproductive sectors are inherently placed into antagonistic contradictions. This fact actually has very important implications for the overall socioeconomic well-being of a society, but it is rarely recognized in modern economic analyses, and is entirely ignored and intentionally obscured by the neoliberal economists.
   So, after the Bolsheviks came to power, the peasants, urban workers and small entrepreneurs, in fact did not have antagonistic contradictions and, on the contrary, could have mutually beneficial cooperation on an equal footing, exchanging goods and services, but instead the Bolsheviks soon arranged surplus procurement, that is, the forcible taking away of bread and other food products from the peasantry, declaring it to be in the interests of the working class. (This expropriation, called "prodrazverstka", was introduced in 1916, but the Bolsheviks pushed it to the limit.) Naturally, such oppression arouse in the "unconscious" peasants hostile feelings not only towards the authorities, but also towards the workers, the proletariat.
   Similarly, even in the later Soviet Union, the proletariat received significantly higher wages than other employees, which caused dislike among the latter and a sense of injustice, because there were no real reasons for introducing such second-class citizens. As a result, employees derisively called the workers "hegemon", and naturally this only served to divide people and cause skepticism towards the country's government. A large part of the proletariat, in turn, paid back with a cold attitude. However, apart from the official Marxist ideology, there was no reason to oppose one to the other.
   The situation with defining classes having higher material and related social status than the considered 40% segment, is similar. Here we are no longer talking about fighting for a piece of bread, as in the lower classes, the stakes are higher and the circle of interests is wider. Representatives of these classes may also have social ambitions, applying for positions at various governmental levels (from local municipalities to central government structures), or supporting financially influential people or their groups, organizations of various kinds. Such a desire for a higher social status, either directly or through influence, is a completely natural feature of people, embedded into us by the evolutionary process as social beings. It just needs to be used correctly, beneficially for the people themselves and for the society.
   The boundaries of the upper socioeconomic classes within a country such as the United States, where ancestry traditionally did not play a big role (unlike, say, in the former England) are largely determined by material status. Roughly speaking, how much money the class can afford to spend to buy influence over government structures for their own benefit, when further development without such influence becomes difficult, or the authorities simply prevent it for the purpose of extortion. For the sake of illustration, we took an extreme case. In fact, other factors can also play a role, especially in more law-abiding and socially oriented countries, where in addition to power and the money, other factors that are more balanced and more reasonable also impact societal and individual life.
   Generally, the boundaries of the upper classes, in addition to their material status, also depend on national and cultural characteristics, kinship and traditional ties, the economic situation in the country and the world, and the political structure. Class members themselves are usually very well aware of their belonging to a certain socioeconomic class, and many tend to move to a higher one once the opportunity arise.
  
   Objective factors that determine socioeconomic changes
  
   And now we come to the most important part of this study, answering the question, what are the objective factors that determine the change of socioeconomic formations? Marx postulated: As the productive forces develop, they increasingly come into conflict with conservative production relations. As a result of the growing contradiction, a conflict is brewing, which is resolved by changing the production relations to those that correspond to the level of development of the productive forces. In the case of capitalist relations, the growing contradictions between the increasing social character of production on the one hand, and the private form of appropriation of the results of labor (by capitalists) on the other hand, seemed to Marx to be an increasing contradiction, which had to be resolved by changing the capitalist socioeconomic formation to a socialist one, where the workers would own the means of production. This will resolve the existing contradiction, and the social nature of production will correspond to the social form of appropriation of the produced products (resources). This doctrine was the essence of Marxism, predicting the inevitable transition from capitalism to socialism, and then to communism. But his theory also declared that similar contradictions are responsible for the change of other socioeconomic formations.
   It is difficult to reveal the mistakes of Marxism, because the arguments seem to have formal logic (that is why these ideas worked on many people), plus they appealed to many people with kind of social justice to lower classes, while expropriation of exploiters by default was assumed as a fair thing to do, even though many exploiters put lots of efforts in acquiring their property and wealth too. But for Marxists this did not count. At the same time, if one digs a little deeper, in the aggregate, Marxism as a doctrine is completely divorced from the real life. Relying on Marxism in understanding the social life, much less trying to transform it according to its canons, is like trying to walk in an impassable swamp - from the outside it looks like a solid surface, but as soon as one steps on it (that is, tries to apply the Marxist teaching in real life), one immediately plunges irreversibly into a swamp. Marxism actually has a problem on a problem. The two main problems are extremism, and the fact that it ignores the real nature of man and human society, and especially the social psychology.
  
   Regarding extremism. Note that the Marxist doctrine implicitly assumes the complete expropriation of property from at least all capitalists, leaving for the will of revolutionaries the broader interpretation of the seizure of any property from the "petty-bourgeois" classes. At the same time, "petty-bourgeoisness" was also interpreted very broadly. Small-scale entrepreneurship and the peasant's possession of a horse were sufficient reasons to declare such people "petty bourgeois" and begin applying repressive measures to them and their families, in order to reduce their "bourgeoisness" and "pull them up" to the advanced proletariat's level. At the same time, it was assumed that the expropriation itself would be free of charge; the slogan "plunder the loot" hung in the air. Of course one should understand the sources of hatred of the peasants oppressed by the landlords, or of the workers exploited by the capitalists. But it is also clear that a state with even a minimal degree of social harmony cannot be built on this kind of extremism.
  
   Real social psychology. It has already been said here that people are not equal in principle. The degree of inequality in many essential characteristics is very high. For the harmony of society, it is necessary that the majority of people have the opportunity to realize their human potential, and for this, the degree of their remuneration should correspond to the range of differences in the abilities of people to do useful real things, that are useful for themselves and for the society. This is a very wide range. But then private entrepreneurship should be allowed, as well as the opportunity to have material resources, and to express one's opinion, if it is not obviously destructive for society. This means that in such a society there must be different classes, including capitalists and private entrepreneurs. All such classes, with a reasonable policy can coexist in harmony, each contributing to the social development and strengthening of the country. In this respect, the primitivism of Marxism can be said to be off the scale. For instance, in the sense of following the category of measure (which is especially important for complex processes, and the social ones in particular), Marxism is obviously the opposite of measure, as well as to the common sense.
   Many people have always tried to achieve, and will continue to trying to achieve a higher social status and material status. It is in their biological and social nature. And if you do not allow them to do this in legal, permitted ways, then they will try to achieve the same in ways that are illegal and even immoral. But why prohibit something that does not harm society, and even on the contrary, contributes to its development, since it releases people's energy, directs it in a constructive way (for which, of course, it is necessary to create appropriate conditions and provide the necessary upbringing and education of people). That is, the real human social psychology is one of the reasons why the totally socialistic (in fact, it always translates into state's) ownership of the means of production can never be realized to the extent that Marx predicted. For the benefit of people and society, the very diverse forms of public ownership of the means of production and other material values and resources have the right to exist. And even more than that, such forms can only be welcomed. But they should have different levels of collective and private organization, and also be able to be independent, not just everything should be state owned, when everything is managed by the state and party bureaucracy, which by and large mean that factually they own them. The society should have a balance of interests of different strata of society, and for this, these strata should have the material resources that they can earn, and of course the rights to fully participate in public and state life, and have possibility of appropriate level influence on local and state politics.
   So, if we start from the real nature of man, then the social ownership of the means of production, and the social equal distribution of the produced product according to Marx, is a social utopia, and even more so - this is an extremist utopia, which is even worse, since such teachings attract extremists and fanatics who stop at nothing when it comes to the implementation of the ideas they have adopted.
  
   What factors caused the change of well-known socioeconomic formations?
  
   Fig. 5 shows schemes of obtaining and distributing resources in slaveholding (A), feudal (B), capitalist (C) and partocratic socialist (D) (governed by the party and state bureaucracy) societies. As can be seen in panel A, slaveholders owned both slaves and land (and other resources that we do not mention here for simplicity). Slaves worked under duress, produced resources that were completely at the disposal of the slaveholder, and the slaveholder directed part of the resources to support the existence of slaves, and if there were few slaves and they were valued, then for their natural reproduction. The resources were produced by slaves, but the slave owners or their managers also contributed. The nature of production was social in this sense, just as it was under capitalism.
  
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   Fig. 5. The scheme of interaction of labor and means of production in different socioeconomic formations. A - slaveholding; B - feudal; C - capitalist, D - partocratic socialist (governed by the party and state bureaucracy).
  
   But then a feudal system began to emerge here and there. What were the reasons for this? According to Marx, there should have been a contradiction between the productive forces and the slave production relations, and the slaves would have to socialize all the property of the slave owner and begin to conduct social production. Or, at least (let's come to Marx's aid) to obtain the vassals' status and thereby facilitate the transition to a feudal society. But it didn't happen, and if one thinks about it a bit, it shouldn't have happened. Suppose the degree of socialization was insufficient. But still, there are no Marxist prerequisites for the transition from slavery to feudalism. The degree of technological development was about the same. The slaves did not gain consciousness. That is, the degree of development of the productive forces has not changed. Slave production relations with slave owners have remained as they were, without undergoing any qualitative changes. Nevertheless, feudalism came. In fact, the reason was purely economic. It was just that slave labor was less productive than the labor of a feudal vassal. Therefore, the feudal lord received more produced resources from the vassal than the slaveholder received from the slave. The feudal lord had an incentive to get as many resources as possible, and increasing productivity contributed to this - it was not an end in itself, but a means of increasing the wealth of the feudal lord. And as a side effect, there was a potential increase in the vassal's wealth if the feudal lord kept some kind of balance.
   The vassals had an allotment of land where they worked, harvested and produced other resources, and in this sense they had more freedom and interest than a slave. The vassal was obliged to give part of the resources produced to the feudal lord, and to carry out some other duties if necessary. The diagram in the Fig. 5, panel B shows this graphically. The difference with the panel A is that the vassal no longer belongs to the feudal lord, like a slave to a slaveholder. Also, the vassal takes part of the produced resources directly. The double arrow shows that the relationships between the feudal lord and the vassal was mutual: the feudal lord did something for the vassal, the vassal did something for the feudal lord.
   Sometimes it is said about the moral, humanistic aspect that a vassal is a freer person than a slave, and that religion may have contributed to this in some way. Even if this was the case, the influence of moral considerations was very insignificant. In our time the powerful people of this world casually trample on human rights, including life, especially dignity, and there is no reason to believe that it was better then, and there is evidence of that. So the reason for the formation of the feudal system was economic, and happened it through social innovation - in the feudal socioeconomic formation labor was more productive, which gave the feudal lord more resources and wealth. And the system was created primarily by the feudal lords, since they were mainly interested in increasing labor productivity to increase their wealth, and, by all means, slaves had no relation to these changes. The vassals also gained something in this symbiosis. So these were mutually beneficial socioeconomic improvements. But in any case, the Marxist conflict between productive forces and production relations had absolutely nothing to do with it. So in this transformation, Marx's teaching did not work.
   After feudalism, as a result of the growing contradictions between the feudal productive forces and the feudal production relations, capitalism was bound to follow, according to Marx. But the problem is that there was no resolution of the conflict, and there was no conflict in the Marxist sense. It is clear that the vassals would like to receive more, and give less to the feudal lord, and the feudal lord, of course, wished the opposite. But this was the case from the very beginning of feudal relations, and it continued to be so until the end of feudalism. The main reasons for the emergence of capitalism are the same insatiable desire for more wealth through making more profit. At that time, the following favorable factors appeared: (a) the higher level of technological development to achieve high labor productivity and produce a sufficient number and a wide range of goods and services; then (b) the level of trade corresponding to the quantity of goods produced and purchased, including the availability of trade routes, and (c) the availability of capital. Growth of population was also a contributing factor. Of course, there were factories before, for example in Carthage, in ancient Rome, there were trade and trade routes, and there was a capital. But it is necessary that all these factors come together, plus a sufficiently large population, well-off buyers, so that the investment of a capital begins to give a tangible return on investment. Thus, again, we see economic (the desire for more wealth by increasing profits), demographic, cultural and geopolitical factors at work, but none of the factors from the arsenal of Marxist doctrine. There just aren't any.
   Now let's look at the scheme of capitalist relations (C) in Fig. 5. Capitalists, who are primarily interested in increasing their wealth through increasing profits, as the main motivation for their activities, own the means of production, hire workers, and manage workers and production themselves or their managers do that. All the received profit goes to the capitalist, who pays the wages of the workers out of it. The only difference between capitalism and the slaveholding system is that capitalists do not own workers like a slave owner owns slaves. In this sense, the workers are more like the vassals of a feudal lord. As a result, we found that all three resource allocation schemes - under the slaveholding, feudal, and capitalist systems - are essentially very similar. The most important and fundamental difference between them is in the labor productivity. Under the feudal system, increased labor productivity (in order to increase profits) was achieved through social innovation, when vassals were interested in the results of their labor. Under early capitalism, while pursuing the same goal of increasing wealth, this was achieved by increased labor productivity through technological innovations, improved organization of production, and mass production, when a larger number of manufactured products makes their production cheaper (economy of scale). Of course, there must also be demand for manufactured goods, which was facilitated by a number of other factors (population growth, an increase of the number of people in the wealthy classes who were able buying more goods, an increase in the assortment of goods, and some other factors).
  
   Capitalism does not remain the same. The period of initial capital accumulation and a large number of capitalist enterprises turned into a period of capital consolidation, when enterprises began to expand, ruining or forcing smaller ones out of the market. Through consolidation, the market was gradually monopolized. Now it was possible to make large profits by setting monopolistic high prices, and no longer to worry about increasing labor productivity and reducing the cost of products. Moreover, it made sense to suppress innovation, including buying patents for new technologies and "burying" them in the drawers. With large monopolistic profits, it became possible to bribe government officials, the media, engage in lobbying, receive lucrative government orders, and so on. Naturally, now there were additional opportunities to oppress labor force, push through the legislature laws that infringe the rights of employees, cut their wages and other actions of the same kind.
   Having crossed national borders, monopolistic and large-scale capitalism was gradually converted into global capitalism, which opened up additional opportunities for enrichment, including transfer of production to countries with cheaper labor, etc. The wealthy capitalists set out to take over the planet and establish their world domination. Not everyone agreed with these plans, and there were contradictions, which capitalists usually try to solve by various impure methods, including wars (wars are also financially very profitable enterprises, so capitalists incite them at every possible pretext). Summarily, the power of capitalists did not bring good to humanity, and will never do, since the actions of capitalists are driven by the easiest and fastest profit increase, which implicitly assumes destruction of all other irrelevant to profit acquisition socioeconomic and other constituents of societal life or, at best, unilateral development of factors contributing to profit only. A better life can only be achieved if the capitalists are brought under close control. Otherwise, the uncontrolled power of capitalists could only lead to destructive outcomes for humanity.
   It remains to look at the diagram of socialist relations D in Fig. 5. It is very similar to the scheme of capitalist relations, with the only difference that the partocracy and the government bureaucracy do not own, but control the means of production and resources of the country, which is indicated by the layer "s". If this layer is removed, that is, the party and government bureaucracy become owners of the means of production and resources, then socialist relations turn into capitalist relations. This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union in the late 80's and early 90's. But since the partocracy and government officials controlled all the production and resources of the country, and at the same time could not take too much due to restrictions of various kinds (they were not the owners yet), they created a wonderful life for themselves with all the amenities, having everything they needed. That was in their power since they controlled everything. However, they had no incentive to do anything else. Hence the Soviet Union lagged in both industry and agriculture since the 1960s. Before that, the socialist ideology worked, motivated people, kept the authorities responsible for the fulfillment of central party and government directives. There were even convinced communists among the party members. Through gradual reforms, it would have been possible to create a good, prosperous country with a socialist orientation, but there were no capable people left after Khrushchev rule. The dominance and dogmatism of the Marxist ideology did not allow to see real life, stifling all useful initiatives in this regard.
   It should be noted that during the transition from capitalism to socialism, there was only a change of the ruling elite, which was to be expected, given the real nature of man and the need for different social functions to be performed by different people - as we discussed earlier. There was no social ownership of the means of production by the workers. All means of production and all country's resources eventually became controlled by the party and government bureaucracy.
   Short-term transition processes immediately after the Bolsheviks' October coup of 1917 do not count. During the Stalin's rule, there were collective forms of production and services (artels, cooperatives), and accordingly collective forms of ownership, not accounting to governmental bodies. However, with the coming to power of an extremely stupid for such a post, and a criminal person Khrushchev, they were almost wiped out. But the artels worked very efficiently, and made a significant contribution to the country's economy. In total, the artels produced more than 30 thousand items of various goods. Nationwide, they provided 100% of the production of children's toys, 40% of furniture, 40% of upper knitwear, 35% of clothing products and 35% of shoes. In some regions, the share of artels in services reached 60-80%. By the mid-1950s, the industrial cooperatives numbered more than 114 thousand enterprises and workshops with a total number of employees of about 2 million people. Those who wished could work as self-employed, single artisans. And they enjoyed tax breaks and other incentives to develop production. And what is important to note, the system of industrial cooperation was developed with the active support of the state. 100 design bureaus, 22 experimental laboratories and two research institutes worked for the technological development of artels. (Data from the article "Artel for the benefit of the state", from the website profile.ru for May 25, 2025). This clearly shows how important it is (a) to develop different forms of ownership, (b) give people the opportunity to take entrepreneurial initiative, (c) give freedom to choose the form of organization and management and distribution of income (artels were self-governing), (d) to have a healthy, non-antagonistic competition between producers of various goods, in this case between artels and state-owned enterprises, which made both of them to work better.
   Rather allegorically, and for propaganda purposes, it was believed that in the Soviet Union everything connected with production, natural resources, was a state property, and even the words "national property" were used. But in reality, these were just words, and all this property was controlled by very particular people holding the appropriate positions.
   So we can sum up our analysis: No transition to a different socioeconomic formation has occurred due to the factors indicated by Marxists. The reasons were different, and we discussed them above. In each transformation, they were not the same, but among the main ones, we should note a strong socio-biological, socioeconomic motivation for faster acquisition of resources, and in greater volume and value, which was achieved, among other things, by increasing labor productivity, especially at first phases of capitalism. Technological progress, which provides new opportunities for obtaining and acquiring resources, and the availability of funds for the development of technologies, production, and extraction of natural resources, served the same purpose, increasing profits. In market economies, these funds are usually provided in the form of capital, although this option is not absolute. Under the Soviet-type socialism, in a planned economy, when money circulation is controlled more by other factors than by the market, this is more like a targeted allocation of funds for certain projects, which may include material resources in addition to the money.
  
   As for the concrete implementation of the Marxist doctrine, in case of the Soviet Union, the results are as follows. Although Marx predicted a proletarian revolution, it did not happen in Russia, but under its pretext, inadequately thinking (many not thinking at all), many mentally unstable and fanatical revolutionaries came to power, which was immediately joined by opportunist adventurers. Together they did a lot of bad things for the country, and killed millions of innocent people (this is not an unfounded statement, I counted it myself, how many people were killed in what period, see my article "Calculating the human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War and World War II" proza.ru/2024/03/04/1748). They also divided the country into supposedly national territories, after which the country was doomed to fall apart at some point, which is exactly what happened. Today's war with Ukraine is a direct consequence of the actions of the Bolsheviks at that time.
   Good things were also done. For example, industrialization was carried out (albeit at a high human and other cost), illiteracy was eliminated, free health care, training, education, and other useful social measures were introduced. The "social elevators" worked somehow for some time, especially in the first decades. However, in general, the overall result is negative from my point of view. As I said earlier, it would be more correct to call the Soviet Union "The Union of Partocratic National Socialist Territories" (UPNST), which reflects its political and governmental essence, although - again, very much expectedly - the "national" soon began transforming into "nationalistic", and it was the USSR's government's foolish Marxist official ideology and politics, which much provoked and facilitated that. There was not even a light shadow of the Soviet Union there, as it was supposed to be. There were no Republics, because the population could not choose representative bodies that would form the government. Power was entirely vested in the partocracy. Stalin's attempt to separate the party's power from the state governance did not succeed. Furthermore, soon he was killed. L. P. Beria also wanted to leave the party only propaganda and personnel fostering, but he was also soon killed, apparently by Khrushchev's assassin general Batitsky. It's very bad when the entire governance system can depend so much on one person.
   The unfounded blind reliance on Marxism provisions could not result in something good. Say, the division inspired by Marxism of the once unified country into national entities of different levels speaks for itself. The fiercest enemy, and especially the most implacable enemy of the country's indigenous population, could not have devised a surer way to destroy such a large country in the end. (Who the members of the united Party of Power actually were, based on their activities and the results. And among them, of course, is Lenin, who immediately began and led the Bolsheviks' party in relentless struggle against the ethnic Russians under the guise of fighting "Russian chauvinism." Of course, the things are not so simple and straightforward, but in general terms, this is what happened in essence, no matter by what statements this de facto genocidal policy was later covered up.)
  
   The results of the application of Marxism in China were very difficult for the people until they allowed private and entrepreneurial activity, which was carefully, systematically, and most importantly more or less rightly regulated at the government level in the interests of the state, and to some extent in the interest of the people. And now China is generally fine. Without going into details, the essence of the Chinese leadership's policy is to allow all economic forms of private-business, state, and provincial municipal activities, but to control them in the interests of the entire country, and if possible of the people. This is the right approach, favored even by political economists of 19th century. Unlike Marxism, which is clearly an extremist doctrine, it is based on measure - an important category of dialectical materialism, and when it comes to complex long-term phenomena, such as a state construction, it becomes one of the most important categories that must be taken into account in all manifestations of the considered phenomenon. Someone must maintain such a balance of interests of all socioeconomic classes in society.
   Now, in many countries, especially in the Western ones (Russia is no exception), plutocracy, oligarchy, and often the global oligarchy rule. The results of such rule speak for themselves - the situation of the rest of the population is only rapidly deteriorating. But it cannot be otherwise, because the rich are rich only because all their aspirations are directed towards obtaining even more wealth at the expense of taking it from others, simply speaking, by robbing the rest of population. Having seized power, they, as always, use it only to acquire even more wealth - this is the meaning of their life as biological creatures, whose entire existence is programmed by deep subconscious primordial reptilian brain instincts to acquire resources, to extract more wealth. Very rare exceptions do not make any difference.
   That is why it is so important that the State policy should take into account the interests of all social classes. How? Equal representation of all classes - one option. One ruling party? Maybe. If the party pursues a policy in the interests of the entire people, of all classes, that could work for some time. But to do this, the party must have an appropriate ideology, social in essence (and maybe even socialistic, why not, the question is how to define socialism), and somehow maintaining its ideological integrity and continue to develop this ideology in a direction that is beneficial for the country and the majority of the population. There must be mechanisms to prevent the ruling party from becoming a servant of the interests of one class. For example, let there be two or more socialist parties that compete for power in a non-antagonistic way, and the range of their approaches would be determined, for example, by the constitution. It is clear that the forms of socialism can also be very different, but there must be some restrictions that would fundamentally prevent one class from coming to power. In general, the discussion of a possible state ideology is not an easy conversation, and we are not in a position to give it a place here. But the main idea, I think, is clear: Politics should be conducted in the interests of the whole country, and in the interests of all social classes, although the weights of these interests, of course, can and should differ, and the procedure for determining the most pertinent in a given situation interests is also not easy.
  
   What's next?
  
   Above, an explanation of the principal reasons for the change in socioeconomic formations was proposed, and discussion of the key concepts and definition of socioeconomic classes was provided. But it's also interesting to look into the vague future. These are uncertain times. Many people do not think about it, but we live in a time of troubles, when there is a change of historical epochs. As this feeling was expressed in [1], "So we are yelling, we're speaking in a situation where there's just frustration all around. But then again, maybe we shouldn't complain. Because if I learn anything from my fellow Americans every day in the street, we're all wondering what the hell is going on because none of the old rules seem to be in place. Each day's headlines are more bizarre than the ones before."
   Little remains of the capitalism of the early twentieth century. Capitalism has been reborn as a global monopolistic monster, which not only has merged with the state apparatuses of many countries and their services, but has already created supranational, hidden from the eyes of society, international structures that together often replace national governments, or manipulate and manage them through their proteges, actually puppets. Many national rulers (presidents, prime ministers) today act not in the interests of their own peoples, but in the interests of the global oligarchy. This explains many - at first glance strange - actions and decisions of many rulers. Of course, it is hard for many people to believe that they are ruled by traitors of the country, but their deeds speak quite eloquently, if for a moment to lift the veil imposed by relentless and pervasive propaganda.
   But there is nothing surprising in this situation; it was all coming to that. The desire for wealth and power should have led to this, having passed through certain stages. Unfortunately, there are still no or not enough people to stop this victorious march of global capitalism, although there were chances to do this. They still exist in some countries that have managed to maintain an independent national policy in the interests of their countries and populations.
   Actually, for the modern Western economic system, the global capitalism, it would be proper to come up with a new name, so much it differs qualitatively from the classical capitalism of the late 19th and first half of 20th centuries. During the 20th century, the power of the rich established almost monopolistic economic, and especially financial, control, crushed public institutions, and in many respects even those that are responsible for the spiritual being - morality, ethics, culture, education, and which previously still had some independence. Money has always influenced government policies to some extent, but now the power of the rich and of working for them governmental bureaucracy much absorbed governments at all levels.
   I can't think of a suitable term for this new type of society. One of its characteristic features is the taking over a control of state and social institutions for the purpose of enriching the oligarchy and imposing its rule. State institutions have essentially become appendages to the power of the global oligarchy. Maybe "state or statehood oligarchization", "oligarchical statehood", "oligarchized statehood"? Just to refer to this qualitatively new phase of capitalism, we will use the term "state oligarchization" here, although one can probably come with a better term.
   This modern oligarchy implements not only its own economic, political, ethnical agenda and their combinations, which is based on the seizure of world power - the establishment of world hegemony, and accordingly the seizure of world resources, but also a radical transformation of all other spheres of human life - moral, cultural, educational, social, etc. - according to its own recipes, and in its own favor, of course. As you know, the appetite increases during meals. You don't have to go far to see the results of this policy. We can observe the impoverishment of people with our own eyes, because the current government of the rich naturally fleeces population in their favor, as Fig. 4 clearly shows. Because they can, and because the instinct of getting rich is the most important incentive in their life. If the generation of sixty-year-olds has managed to gain something from the previous times, when the capitalists had to share common wealth with the people, because of the existence of socialist countries, then the forty-year-olds are already in a noticeably worse material and social situation. And the current generation of twenty-year-olds will get even less, these younger people are actually deprived chances for a decent life in Western countries. England is a country with little natural resources, people have few reserves, and so most of the population has always lived on the verge of survival, so that there all these trends of impoverishment shows faster, more visibly now, while the rest of Western countries will soon follow the same path.
   With inflated expectations about the so-called artificial intelligence, the global oligarchy has generally bitten the bit. They have already said that it is necessary to reduce the population, but now, in their opinion, all obstacles for them have been removed. Even before, people were not really needed much in capitalist systems - with rare short periods, unemployment was always significant. But now, in this system of global capitalism, state oligarchization, people are becoming even more unnecessary, in fact superfluous people. Since people will be deprived of material resources, they will not be able to reproduce, have children. As a result, the population will decline rapidly, even without concentration camps, if the oligarchy wants to wait a little longer. And of course, unleashing wars will serve oligarchy well too, allowing to solve many other issues at the same time, in addition to the destruction of the population, such as mind control, the removal of the last remnants of civil liberties, and so on.
   This is the logic of change, where the oligarchs should be pushed by their instincts for enriching themselves in the present conditions. There could be variations in implementation of this plan, but the general direction could only be this, that is, towards greater wealth and power by virtue of impoverishing the rest. Of course, there are obstacles on this path, because no oligarch wants to share wealth with others, and if the oligarchs unite, it is only by necessity. As soon as the opportunity arises, they will eat each other. And there are also other countries that do not want the oligarchic rule, such as China.
   In general, these plans of the oligarchs are Utopian. Even if they manage to create such a world structure for a while, it will not be able to last for long, it will crumble. The reason is extremism of the basic ideas. Stability is achieved by a measure, and extremism is the opposite of the measure.
   So this is not so much a forecast as a statement of the already implemented world order. Can we say that this is a new socioeconomic formation? In terms of the totality of qualitative changes in all spheres of human activity, that is, not only in the economic sphere, but also in the moral, cultural, intellectual, geopolitical, and technological spheres, it is probably so. How long can it last? Not for long. The system is too unstable, is based on violence, cruelty, ethical and moral lawlessness, and in fact the robbery of everyone and everything. No, such systems cannot exist for long.
  
   Fortunately, there is still a real possibility of other ways of developing human societies. Of course, the global oligarchy will do everything to hinder them, but I think such opportunities not only will survive, but also will strengthen in the process of this struggle, because not only the metal and electronics, but also the system wins. And such systems will definitely be stronger than state oligarchization, whose ideologists and leaders are now also trying to destroy traditional societies in Western countries, thereby rapidly reducing their capacity for decisive and efficient actions.
   We have already discussed what socio-political structure could be optimal for the development of countries and a decent, meaningful life for people, sufficiently supported financially for the personal development and social progress. In addition to economic, technological and cultural development, it is very important to have an adequate ideology of society that would equally encourage both personal and social development, that is, the understanding that without the social, societal development the personal development is suppressed, and without the personal development, sustainable social progress is impossible. Such an ideology should be the guidance of society, determining the vector of personal development. And, of course, there should be appropriate institutions that support and implement this ideology. Such an ideology should not be a dogma, it should be a developing, evolving one, and as many representatives of society as possible should participate in this development. If there had been such a broad discussion of ideological problems in the Soviet Union, if Marxism had not been elevated to the rank of infallible truth and dogma, the fate of the country and its people would have been different, immeasurably better.
   A creative reasoning mind yields a great power. But in its way, people always willingly or unwittingly erect many obstacles. The way for creative mind must be cleared, it must be helped. We have seen that the change of all previous social formations was motivated by the desire for prosperity, wealth, and through this - by a higher social status. Socialism in the Soviet Union has shown that the majority of people were satisfied with such a socioeconomic system, when it is possible to achieve a relatively small, by capitalist standards, difference in material well-being, but people have the opportunity to significantly improve their social status. Under capitalism, people are simply duped into material consumption, it is excessive there, and a significant stratification of the population by income creates possibility of significant material inequality.
   The next factor that works in favor of creating a more just society is that in any society, at all times, there have been and are people who support the common cause, ready to work for the society's well being, and such purposeful education significantly increases the number of such people. In the Spanish colonies in South America, the office of Lieutenant governor was traditionally seen as a ticket to personal enrichment. And yet, according to statistics, about one appointed vice-governor out of 7-8 honestly served the king and the crown for the official salary only. Such people still exist, even in capitalist countries, where many have already been sunk to the very bottom, so that the law of "man to man wolf" rules at all levels. And nonetheless. If the adopted ideology and the created system of selecting people for governing gives such people access to the respective posts, then they will work for the benefit of society not for fear, but for conscience' sake. It is clear that relying only on the good will of such people is not enough, one need a system that would guarantee the sustainability and reproduction of such management for the benefit of the entire society. But the presence of such people confirms the possibility of creating, and of sustainable existence of societies in which socioeconomic policies are carried out in the interests of the whole society, and not for one special class, whether it is the class of Bolsheviks, or the super-rich class in today's capitalist countries.
   Perhaps one of the main lessons of human history in the last two or three centuries is that it is possible to create socioeconomic societies based on invented constructions, in which ideologies play a large, and often the main organizing role in all spheres of life. If one thinks about it, this is by no means an obvious and far from trivial fact that has far-reaching consequences. Marx, according to legend, was looking for objective mechanisms responsible for the transformation of human communities, which would explain socioeconomic changes with the determinism of Newton's Second Law. He didn't find them. Let's admit this his failure honestly. And, did he really seek them as few real scientists seek the truth? I led a lot of research and practical projects. I know and "feel by the liver" how a scientific research or a specific project develops, how people's brains work in this process. And I can see that what Marx proposed was a stretch for his passionate desire to have an explanation that would lead to the conclusions that he had already drawn in advance. But despite the incorrectness of the Marxist propositions, the state was built on their basis, though through breaking the spine cord of the society and on the blood. Isn't that amazing? How flexible was the adaptability of people to the conditions of even such a life, how deeply, it turns out, it is possible to format the consciousness of people so that they (not all, of course, but many!) took this ideological propaganda at a declared value and were sincerely guided by it in their lives. An amazing creation of nature - the human brain. But it is very imperfect, in the sense that it often can produce and take as a guide inadequate to real life constructions.
  
   Summary and inferences. Wide gates of opportunities
  
   The conclusion of the study is quite unexpected for me. (Which adds objectivity to the done research, by the way.) Yes, there are objective factors that determine the development, transformation, degradation, and destruction of human societies. Living matter, unlike inanimate matter, constantly needs resources to maintain its vital activity. Plus, in the case of human communities, this living matter is additionally organized socially, that is, each person, in addition to resources for existence and biological reproduction, must also constantly spend resources in order to be reproduced as a social цреатуре, in other words, constantly maintain (and many strive to improve) their social status. Therefore, it is quite natural that the life of human societies is organized around the acquisition, production of resources and their distribution, and the most important thing for human communities is, of course, the distribution stage, which determines who gets what and how much. How many loafers and outright parasites exist comfortably in the world, just because they managed to integrate into the distribution system.
   In this distribution system, participants have unequal rights and opportunities, even simply because people are not equal in principle, in all possible characteristics, and the range of these characteristics is large. This means that the distribution, in principle, will not be equal, and this inequality will also be significant. In this distribution process, people will organize themselves into groups according to their capabilities in order to get a certain share of resources in a certain way. This leads to the formation of socioeconomic classes. If at the same time one class gets more resources at the expense of another class, then the interests of these classes are antagonistic, or conflicting. If distribution of the overly acquired resources between classes is not regulated by some above-class management system, then sooner or later one class, or several classes united on a common basis, will achieve a redistribution of resources in their favor, taking them away from other classes. This is how resources were reallocated to the party and government bureaucrats in the Soviet Union, and how resources are now being taken away by the super-rich from all the lower classes in capitalist countries.
   These are the main objective factors that determine the development, life and death of human societies. How these factors will combine, how they will mutually affect each other, and what the final result will be, a very wide range of possible outcomes can be, while the role of random factors can be also very significant. It is very interesting to note that in this regard we have a one-to-one analogy with inanimate matter. (Which for me personally is a great relief in philosophical and ideological meaning, by the way. Over the course of my life so many people have tried to convince me in special properties of living matter, humans, and human societies, that it was difficult to resist all this time. And finally this load is dropped. What a relief!) It turns out that the number of degrees of freedom in development and outcomes in the case of living matter is principally the same as in the case of inanimate matter. Accordingly, there can be no any predefined change in socioeconomic formations. Socioeconomic changes can take a very wide range of paths. The range is not unlimited, there are certain limiting mechanisms, but this range is very wide indeed. So wide that a creative mind can change things for the better for sure, and in many ways. However, such a flexibility has a reverse side, since also an evil, sick fantasies can also be implemented in reality - there are plenty of real examples. I would very much like to see a creative mind that is focused on the development of which the whole society would win. There are prerequisites for this. And there are also prerequisites for the bad development of events, and this is the direction in which the collective leadership of Western countries, both the ones on the front and behind the scenes, is now so persistently pushing towards. And their henchmen, the fifth columns and secret puppets in other countries help them in every possible way. I'm not even talking about the savage plans of some rich madmen to destroy most of the population, control it completely, and other phantasmagoria of their sick criminal minds. This development of events only once again confirms that it is impossible to allow power to belong to one class, and especially to the class of the rich, because the instincts of their reptilian brains for wealth disrupts the balance of work of other parts of their brains, including depriving many of them of an adequate perception of reality.
   It is also possible to organize the supra-class (or inter-class) management of society in different ways, and there are many options here, which follow from the same general considerations that were used above. It can be one party (if it somehow can maintain its legal capacity and ideology, which is difficult), many parties, elected persons and bodies, even hereditary institutions can successfully perform this function for a certain period of time, although I am not a supporter but even an opponent of such institutions. Institutions that cannot usurp power will be more effective and long-lasting; this will prevent monopoly of power, which sooner or later leads to autocracy and despotism. Of course, among these many implementations, there are more or less optimal ones, but the main thing is that they are there. One thing is however for sure - for a normal, healthy, socially oriented society, such an inter-class societal management is necessary. And it should not be an advisory body. It should have sufficient powers to regulate the distribution of public resources among classes, and have the right to use resources to strengthen the country and ensure a decent life for the widest possible segments of population.
  
   References
  
   1. M. Hudson (2025) Adam Smith, Marx, and BRICS' Struggle, interview with R. Wolf and M. Watson by N. Alkhorshid, https://www.unz.com/mhudson/adam-smith-marx-and-brics-struggle/
   2. Shestopaloff Y. K. (2025). Benchmarks for Fair Inequality. Wealth Distribution, Causes of Observed Findings. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15104039
   3. www.esperanto.mv.ru/wiki/Марксизм/ПроизводительныеСилы
   4. K. Marx. K. Marx, F. Engels, Collected Works, ed. 2, vol. 6, p. 441.
   5. Semenov Y. I. (2017) Vvedenii v nauku filosofii [Introduction to the Science of Philosophy]. Book
   3. Marxist Breakthrough in Philosophy, 2nd ed., LENAND, p. 83.
   6. Shestopalov Yu. K. Is there a just inequality, and how to define it? Criteria, appendix to the distribution of wealth. https://lit.lib.ru/s/shestopalow_j_k/text_2320.shtml
   7. Smith A. Issledovanie o prirode i prichinakh bogatstva narodov [Research on the nature and causes of the wealth of peoples]. Moscow, 1962, p. 194.
   8. Ricardo D. Nachala politicheskoi ekonomiki i nalogovogo obl'blozheniya [The beginning of political economy and taxation], Sochi. Vol. 1, Moscow, 1955.
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