During the second semester at university, we had electives, and I chose the history of European civilisation's culture. The first lecture began with the question, ‘What is culture and what is civilisation?’
'What is culture and what is civilisation?’ is an extremely complex question, and as it turned out, there are no strict definitions for these terms, with different authors interpreting them in various ways. We attempted to generalise these concepts and defined them as follows.
Culture encompasses the entire spectrum of human spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and social activities. It includes beliefs, traditions, norms, values, languages, arts, rituals, and customs that characterise a particular society or group of people. Culture involves both the material (physical objects, artefacts, architecture, technologies) and the spiritual (religion, philosophy, literature, science, art, norms, customs, traditions). In short, culture creates the spiritual and physical assets for civilisation.
Civilisation generally implies a high level of societal development in technological, political, social, and cultural aspects. It is the sum of achievements that ensure complex forms of social organisation, governance, and production. Civilisation includes social organisation (state structures, laws, legal systems), economic infrastructure (development of trade, agriculture, industry), and technological advancements (use of tools, development of infrastructure, transportation systems). In other words, civilisation is the process of solidifying society; it benefits from the assets provided by culture.
Karl Marx's Social formation theory
The core tenets of the socio-economic formations approach were articulated in the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, with its classical definition found in the concept of the progressive succession of modes of production, which form the basis of socio-economic formations. These formations, as stages of progress, advance to increasingly higher levels. Karl Marx formulated the concept of a materialist interpretation of history, based on four fundamental principles:
1. The Principle of the Unity of Humanity: This principle asserts the unity of the historical process.
2. The Principle of Historical Regularity: Marx acknowledges the existence of general, stable, and recurring essential connections and relationships among people and the results of their activities throughout the historical process.
3. The Principle of Determinism: This principle recognises the existence of cause-and-effect relationships and dependencies. From the multitude of historical phenomena, Marx considered it necessary to identify the main, determining factors. According to Marx, the mode of production of material goods is the primary determining factor in the historical process.
4. The Principle of Progress: According to Marx, historical progress is the gradual development of society, advancing to increasingly higher levels.
The materialist explanation of history is grounded in the formational approach. The concept of socio-economic formation is central to Marx's explanation of the driving forces behind the historical process and the periodisation of history. Marx posits that if humanity develops in a consistent, progressive manner as a unified whole, then it must go through certain stages in its development. He called these stages "socio-economic formations." According to Marx, a socio-economic formation represents "a society at a certain stage of historical development, a society with distinctive characteristics."
The five-stage schema is as follows: prehistory; slavery; feudalism; capitalism (including imperialism as its highest stage); communism (including socialism as its first stage). Each subsequent system arises from the previous one. However, this model ceases to be applicable when considering the historical development of Eastern countries. Marx himself recognised that some countries did not fit into this five-formation sequence and classified these under the Asiatic mode of production.
Firstly, the formational approach implies a unilinear nature of historical development. Marx's theory of formations was formulated as a generalisation of Europe's historical path. Later historical research showed that even within Europe, the development of certain countries (e.g., Russia) does not always fit into the five-formation schema. Thus, the formational approach presents difficulties in reflecting the diversity and variability of historical development.
Secondly, the formational approach is characterised by a rigid association of all historical phenomena with the mode of production and the system of economic relations (economic determinism). The historical process is primarily viewed through the lens of the establishment and change of modes of production: the explanation of historical phenomena is heavily reliant on objective, impersonal factors, relegating the main subject of history—the human being—to a secondary role.
Thirdly, the formational approach absolutizes the role of conflictual relations, including violence, in the historical process. This methodology predominantly describes the historical process through the prism of class struggle. Consequently, alongside economic processes, significant importance is also attributed to political processes.
Fourthly, the formational approach contains elements of providentialism and social utopianism. As noted earlier, the formational concept assumes the inevitability of the historical process's development from the classless primitive communal formation, through class-based formations, to the classless communist formation.
The Contributions of Oswald Spengler and Arnold J Toynbee to the Development of Civilisational Theory
Oswald Spengler proposed replacing Marx's formation paradigm with his concepts of 'culture' and 'civilisation' in his work ‘The Decline of the West’. He strongly rejected the conventional division of history into 'Ancient World — Middle Ages — Modern Times' (since it holds no significance for non-European societies). Spengler offered a different perspective on world history, viewing it as a series of independent cultures, each experiencing phases of birth, development, and death, much like living organisms. The death of any culture, be it Egyptian or 'Faustian' (i.e., Western culture from the 12th to 18th centuries), is marked by the transition from culture to civilisation. Hence, the key distinction in his concept is between the 'becoming' (culture) and the 'become' (civilisation).
Oswald Spengler's concept of the levelling unity of the idea of the world-historical process suggests replacing it with another image—a cyclical history of the emergence, flourishing, and demise of numerous distinctive and unique cultures. According to Spengler, the self-development of culture is only possible within the context of its subjects' awareness of the significance of procedures such as measurement, calculation, the formation and fixation of external world images, and so forth.
Spengler's ideas influenced Arnold Joseph Toynbee, who developed a mechanism for the emergence of civilizations (culture, in Toynbee's view, already exists within civilization itself). This mechanism can be encapsulated in the model of "challenge and response." Toynbee believed that for civilization to develop, the environment must present a manageable challenge to humanity, and a creative minority must successfully respond to this challenge by solving the problem. Civilizations that develop successfully go through stages of emergence, growth, crisis, and dissolution. The development of civilization is determined by whether the creative minority of that civilization can find answers to the challenges posed by the natural world and human society.
Toynbee identifies several types of challenges: the challenge of harsh climates (Egyptian, Sumerian, Chinese, Mayan, Andean civilizations), the challenge of new lands (Minoan civilization), the challenge of sudden shocks from neighbouring societies (Hellenic civilization), the challenge of constant external pressure (Russian Orthodox, Western civilization), and the challenge of oppression, where a society, having lost something vital, directs its energy towards developing compensatory qualities. Each civilization provides a formulated response to the challenges posed by nature, social contradictions, and particularly by other civilizations, through its ‘creative minority.’ During the stages of emergence and growth, the creative minority finds answers to environmental challenges, increasing its authority and contributing to the civilization's growth. During the stages of crisis and dissolution, however, the creative minority loses its ability to respond to environmental challenges and transforms into an elite that stands above society, governing not through the force of authority but through the force of arms. The majority of the civilization's population becomes an internal proletariat.
Key Differences Between Civilisational and Formation Theories
1. Approach to History
Civilisation Theory: Emphasises cyclicality and the uniqueness of cultures and civilizations.
Formation Theory: Focuses on linearity and the successive changes of socio-economic formations.
2. Focus
Civilisation Theory: Centres on culture, traditions, and religion.
Formation Theory: Focuses on economics, production relations, and class struggle.
3. Methodology
Civilisation Theory: Uses qualitative analysis of unique characteristics of civilizations.
Formation Theory: Employs materialistic analysis of economic foundations and class relationships.
Nevertheless, we can compare civilizations, but never cultures