The problem of social progress and its criteria.
Progress is a form of development characterized by such irreversible changes in a phenomenon or an integral system, which results in their transition from the inferior to the superior, from the less perfect to the more perfect state. Having defined progress, it is necessary first to find out whose progress - that of an individual, a social group, a society or the whole of humanity - is it? This is far from an idle question because an individual's progress has its characteristics and criteria that do not coincide with those of society or humanity.
Social progress is the direction of human development, the kind of "human being", characterized by such irreversible changes of mankind with all aspects of its life activity, as a result of which mankind moves from the lowest to the highest, from the less perfect to the more perfect state. Social progress is the development of the entire society as a whole, a movement towards the perfection of all humanity.
In the extensive literature on social progress, there is currently no single answer to the main question: what is the general sociological criterion for social progress?
The relatively small number of authors claim that it is illegal to raise the question about the single criterion of social progress because human society is a complex organism, the development of which is carried out along different lines, which makes it impossible to formulate a single criterion.
The majority of authors believe it is possible to formulate a single general sociological criterion of social progress.
However, even with the very formulation of such a criterion, there are significant differences.
One part of scientists claims that the general sociological criterion of social progress is the productive forces of society.
A serious argument in favor of this position is that the history of mankind itself begins with the manufacture of tools and exists due to the continuity in the development of productive forces.
The drawback of this criterion is that the evaluation of the productive forces in statistics takes into account their number, nature, level of development and related productivity, ability to grow, which is very important when comparing different countries and stages of historical development. For example, the number of productive forces in modern India is higher than in South Korea, and its quality is lower. If the criterion for progress in the development of the productive forces; if it is a dynamic assessment, this implies a comparison not in terms of the greater or lesser development of the productive forces, but terms of their progress and speed of development. But in this case, the question arises as to what period should be taken for comparison.
Another part of the authors, taking into account the difficulties that arise in the use of the abovementioned criterion, believes that all the difficulties will be overcome if we take the method of material goods production as a general sociological criterion of social progress. A strong argument in favor of this position is that the foundation of social progress is the development of the method of production as a whole, which, taking into account the state and growth of productive forces, as well as the nature of production relations, can be much more fully show the progressive nature of one form in relation to another. Without denying that the transition from one mode of production to another, more progressive, is the basis for progress in several other areas, opponents of this viewpoint almost always point out that the main question remains: how to determine the progressivity of this new mode of production.
The third group of authors suggests that both the degree of development of productive forces and the degree of freedom in society should be taken as a general sociological criterion. This two-fold criterion of social progress at first glance impresses by the fact that it takes into account the unity of man's attitude to nature and society, to natural and social forces. However, the "Achilles' heel" of this position lies not only in the internal incoherence of the elements of the proposed criterion but also in its focus on the analysis of the antagonistic form of social progress.