The Historical Experience of Socialist China and K. Marx’s Theory of Economic Formations

The paper examines the various aspects of the historical experience of the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The undoubted success of this experience posed a whole series of fundamentally new problems of a methodological and theoretical nature to the philosophy of history. The paper discusses the attitude to socialism with Chinese characteristics in modern Russian literature. The diversity of existing points of view (liberal, technocratic, socialist) is emphasized. The author researches the noncapitalist path of development of China and demonstrates that the transition to socialism with Chinese characteristics was at the same time a restoration of the national (civilizational) way of development that had been lost earlier as a result of colonial aggression. The author reconsiders the world-systems analysis from the Marxist positions in order to find ways and methods of theoretical combination of formational and civilizational approaches to history. This combination is possible only through the use of world-systems analysis, which reveals a much more complex logic of the historical process in the 21^st century in comparison with the classical Marxist logic of economic formations. The author demonstrates that at least two types of socialism exist. Western, or European, socialism derives from the mature capitalist structures of society. The non-Western socialism inherits the logic of national historical (civilizational) traditions. Nevertheless, the nature of socialism formation is preserved and reproduced there. At the present stage of world development, non-Western socialist countries are able to rationally use the achievements of modern capitalism for its own purposes, especially in the fields of science, technology and management. In the conclusion, the author argues that non-Western socialism has great prospects in the 21^st century for the enhancement of social development and transformation.

K. Marx’s doctrine of formations, civilizational approach, world-systems analysis, China, Russia, historical communism, peripheral capitalism, non-capitalist socialism, national development path

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