Labor productivity and production efficiency. evolution of the system of criteria for the effectiveness of labor activity. The evolution of production systems

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Introduction

3. Forms of work

5. Settlement task

Conclusion

List of sources used

labor market economy

Introduction

The idea of ​​labor probably begins from the very moment when a person himself appeared and began to use tools for his needs, foreign researchers Ruiz S.A. represent a certain historical retrospective of the development of labor. Quantanilla and B. Wilpert.

In ancient Greece, a negative attitude towards everyday compulsory work dominated. Particularly despised was daily physical labor intended "for slaves", but not for free citizens. Labor "for oneself" was recognized only on the condition that something "eternal" was created.

In the Old Testament, work was seen as a severe test imposed by the Lord as a punishment for original sin. Labor is the expiation of sin, and it is necessary only because it allows you to share the fruits of labor with other people (with those in need).

In medieval guilds, ascetic labor was secularized (turned into a secular value). At the same time, labor is seen as the embodiment of religious service.

The Reformation elevated the role of labor as a special form of obligation and duty. Work should contribute to "building the kingdom of God" on earth, and the work itself is "grace", and the harder the work, the better.

The emergence of the proletariat in the XVII-XX centuries. significantly changed the concept of work. If earlier the organization of labor relied on violence, then later conscious subordination, discipline, reliability, punctuality and loyalty to management come to the fore.

The purpose of the work is to study the evolution of ideas about work.

1. The classical period of development of ideas about labor

A great contribution to the development of the doctrine of labor was made by W. Petty and Adam Smith, David Ricardo (English political economy school). They put moral views on solid ground, religious values ​​in the plane of analysis.

William Petty (1623-1687) - the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor required for its production - the founder of the theory of labor value.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) Labor is a factor in the wealth of all nations; the division of labor has a useful and manifold effect. The division of labor increases dexterity, speed, labor effect, which leads to an increase in labor productivity; through it the growth of national wealth. The negative side of the division of labor: when performing the same operations, a person does not develop his mental abilities, becomes stupid and ignorant.

David Ricardo (1772-1823) The theory of labor value is completed. He mistakenly believed that labor is a commodity, and reduced it to working time. But it is not labor that is sold, but the labor force capable of creating goods.

Further development in the concept of labor was made by representatives of the French sociological school: C. Fourier, Claude Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Emile Durkheim.

Saint-Simon (1760-1825) - considers a person as a unity of spiritual and physical forces, therefore labor is a social phenomenon, obligatory for all people, idleness is an unnatural, non-moral, harmful phenomenon.

Labor is the source of all virtues; assumed distribution - according to work, and that exploitation was impossible.

Charles Fourier (1772-1837) - work should be the greatest pleasure for a person, and therefore should be attractive: the elimination of hired labor, materially provides workers, a short work shift, the socialization of production, labor protection, the right of everyone to work.

Payment according to work, and the duration of working time is 2 hours.

He put forward the principle of change of labor.

Robert Owen (1771-1858) found a connection between living conditions outside the sphere of work and relations in the labor process and labor productivity, noting that a person carries out labor activity with his whole personality. The working environment must correspond to human nature (reduction of the working day, labor protection measures).

Serious studies of labor were carried out in the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel was an idealist (the idea exists by itself, then it is alienated in nature and returns to itself and consciousness in man). In order for consciousness, as a lower form, to turn into self-consciousness, as a higher form, action, human labor, is necessary. In work, consciousness becomes self-consciousness, and a person, thanks to work, becomes a person. Thus, Hegel was the first of the philosophers to describe the process of self-generation of man in history through labor. He understands labor as activity and production in general, extending it to nature as well. Hegel considered labor a means of self-expression and self-affirmation of a person and that the character and essence of an individual can be accurately determined by his deeds and labor in which he manifests himself. But Hegel's ideas are one-sided - he did not see any negative aspects in labor under capitalism, he did not know the practice.

Pierre Joseph Proudop (1809-1865) dealt with the problems human labor, he is considered one of the most prominent thinkers of pre-Marxist socialism and the founder of anarchism. His views: the result of labor is a social result, no one has the right to alienate it; but private property makes this possible, as does the exploitation of the labor of others, so it should be abolished. Labor is the decisive force of society, determining its growth and the whole organism. A person who does not know how to use tools is not a person, but an anomaly, an unfortunate creature. The criterion for the progress of society is the development of tools and the development of industry.

Marx and Engels made a significant contribution to the understanding of human labor. they considered labor as a social multi-valued phenomenon, and primarily as a sociological factor.

K. Marx (1818-1883) considers the issues of alienation and emancipation of labor, notes that labor and labor activity should be considered in the context of their relationship with other types of human activity. The development of productive forces leads to changes both in the content and in the nature of labor, and in their unity they influence the position of a person in the labor process and in social organization society.

F. Engels (1820-1895) showed the role of labor in the emergence of man and human society as a whole, labor is the first and basic condition of human life. The division of labor in a society with a spontaneous development of production leads to the enslavement of producers, turns them into a mere appendage of the machine. This can be eliminated by eliminating the socio-economic distance of the producer from the means of production, that is, by eliminating the monopoly of private property on them, this will eliminate the old division of labor.

Thus, Marx and Engels prepared the basic prerequisites for the emergence of the sociology of labor, examined its main categories: the concept of labor, the relationship between labor and man. Changes in the content and nature of labor, the division of labor and its social consequences, the alienation of labor and ways to continue it, the impact of living conditions on labor activity.

2. The labor process and its main elements

The main elements of the labor process are: labor as an expedient activity; objects of labor; means of labor.

Labor is primarily a process, while labor power is a combination of physical qualities and mental abilities of a person, his ability to work. Thus, labor is the process of consuming labor power.

The subject of labor is what a person’s labor is aimed at (directly natural material or raw material that has already undergone a certain processing).

The means of labor are called a thing or a complex of things that a person places between himself and the object of labor and which act as a conductor of his influences on this object. The means of labor are divided into two groups: natural, or natural (land, forest, water, etc.) and produced, or technical, created by people (machines, equipment, buildings, structures).

The objects of labor and means of labor are collectively called "means of production", and they form a material (objective) factor of production. The labor force is considered as a personal (subjective) factor of production. The means of production and human labor power constitute the productive forces

The productive forces of the second order include any factors of production that can be included in the production process either at the present moment or in the next period of development (natural forces, science, labor cooperation). They influence the outcome. labor process indirectly through intermediaries.

For today in economic theory It is customary to divide the factors of production into three groups:

Land as a factor of production is a natural resource and includes all the benefits given by nature (land, water, minerals, etc.) used in the production process;

Capital - all that is capable of generating income, or resources created by people for the production of goods and services. Such an approach to this category synthesizes the points of view of Western economists on capital (for example, A. Smith interpreted capital as accumulated labor, D. Ricardo - as a means of production, J. Robinson considered capital cash). In Marxist political economy, capital was understood differently - first of all, as a value that brings surplus value ("self-increasing value"), as a determining economic attitude, and the ratio of operation;

Labor is a purposeful activity of people that requires the application of mental and physical efforts, during which they transform natural objects to meet their needs. The labor factor also includes entrepreneurial abilities, which are sometimes considered as a separate factor of production. The fact is that land, labor and capital cannot create anything by themselves until they are united in a certain proportion by the entrepreneur, the organizer of production. It is for this reason that the activities of entrepreneurs, their abilities are often considered as an independent factor of production.

Some economists propose two more factors of production - entrepreneurship and the scientific and technological level of production.

3. Forms of work

Expressions of the formal features of labor (as opposed to meaningful ones) give grounds to subdivide labor into various forms its implementation. The main formal sign of the characteristics of labor is the number of workers participating in the labor process. According to this sign, individual (sole) work is distinguished, when a person works alone, and joint work, when work is performed by a group of people within an enterprise, institution, or organization. In the latter case, the size of the enterprise, the number and structure of its personnel matter.

Another formal sign of the characteristics of labor is the degree of mechanization of the labor process. The following forms of labor are distinguished here: manual - work is performed using a manual non-mechanized tool (hammer, screwdriver, file, etc.); manual mechanized - work is done manually using a mechanized tool (electric drill, pneumatic hammer, etc.); machine-manual - the work is performed by a machine (machine) while a person is working on it (for example, when manually feeding a tool while working on a machine); machine - the machine performs all the main types of work, and the worker performs auxiliary ones (starting and loading equipment, changing tools and workpieces, etc.); automated - the main and auxiliary work is performed by an automatic machine, and the worker starts the machine into operation and stops it; hardware - the technological process is carried out in the apparatus, and the worker controls the hardware process. An analysis of the provisions related to the interpretation of forms of labor shows that they also mean forms of labor organization.

4. Problems of the functioning of the labor market in the transitional economy of modern Russia

Currently, the situation in the labor market is acquiring new features. First, long-term hidden unemployment, which is accompanied by the labor shortage caused by it, continues. The decline in production, on the one hand, and the low efficiency of the organization of production and labor, on the other, increase the scale of underutilization of workers.

Secondly, there were significant failures in the reproduction of the professional and qualification structure of the employed. The natural departure of older workers in many occupational skill groups is not being replenished. This jeopardizes the development of the leading branches of the national economy, primarily engineering. In general, the scale and level of professional training of workers in mass professions does not meet the long-term requirements. The redistribution of the employed by sectors (above all, the increase in the proportion of the non-productive sphere), which is on the whole necessary and progressive, not only exceeds the current possibilities of the national economy, but is often carried out irrationally (an exorbitantly high proportion of security structures, a shortage of teachers and medical workers).

In general, the main characteristics of employment (its structure, dynamics, etc.) are more indicative of the persistence of the previous unsatisfactory situation with the use of the labor force than of its market transformations.

The decline in the general standard of living of the population has led to over-employment among young students who are forced to work in their free time from school. The number of offers is also increasing due to graduates educational institutions. The absence of a mechanism regulating the employment of graduates of educational institutions leads to serious problems. Of particular concern is the loss of the value of professionalism by young people. There is a clear trend towards the lumpenization of young people, which in the short term will affect social structure society.

Thus, as market relations and competition develop, and the restructuring of the sectoral structure of employment accelerates, the value of employee training will inevitably increase. This will help increase youth employment in education. World and domestic experience confirms the trend of increasing the duration of education of young people and their later entry into active labor activity. At the same time, the requirements of employers to the labor force are changing. From the tactics of obtaining momentary profit, the entrepreneur is moving to a long-term strategy for obtaining sustainable income in a competitive environment, therefore, as a result, they will need to increase the hiring of a young workforce.

5. Settlement task

1. Name of the enterprise - Moydodyr LLC

2. Type of activity - car wash

3. Type of products - car washing, interior cleaning, polishing, complex cleaning.

4. Technological process divided into operations (washing a car): washing off coarse dirt from a hose, washing a car with chemicals, washing off detergents, drying.

5. Norm of time and category of work on operations:

Washing the car - 2 category - 30 min.

Interior cleaning - 3 category - 60 min.

Polishing - 4th category - 45 min.

Complex cleaning - 4 category - 120 minutes.

6. Working hours of the enterprise - from 11.00 to 20.00

1. Draw up a planned balance of working time for one employee per year

Name of indicator

Meaning

Calendar fund of working time, days.

Number of non-working days - total, incl.

Festive

Weekend

Number of holiday days, days

Number of working days, days (clause 1-clause 2)

Shift duration, hours

The duration of the reduction of working hours on the pre-holiday day, h.

Nominal working time fund, h. (clause 4xp.3-clause 6)

Scheduled full-day absenteeism, % of the number of working days

Effective fund of working time, days. (clause 4-clause 8)

Scheduled intra-shift reductions in working hours, % of shift duration

Effective fund of working time, h. (clause 9x (clause 5-clause 10)-clause 6)

Time to service the workplace - 7%;

Time for rest and personal needs - 8%;

The time of breaks provided by the technology and organization of the production process is 3%.

We will calculate on the example of a comprehensive cleaning of a car.

Operational time = 120 minutes. Then, the time to service the workplace \u003d 7% of \u003d 120 minutes * 0.07 \u003d 8.4 minutes;

Time for rest and personal needs \u003d 8% of \u003d 120 minutes * 0.08 \u003d 9.64 minutes;

The time of breaks provided by the technology and organization of the production process - 3% of = 120 min * 0.03 = 3.6 min.

Total auxiliary time 21.64 min.

Piece time for the manufacture of a unit of production or operation:

K - the sum of the time standards for auxiliary work

Norm piece-calculation time min.

preparatory and closing time

Production rate for an 8-hour shift

8h*60min = 480 min.

Then the calculation of the norm of time for operations will be:

car wash

Interior cleaning

Polishing

Complex cleaning

Operational time, min

Service work. places, min.

Rest time, min.

Breaks, min.

Standard time

The norm of piece-calculation time

Norm of production per shift, operations

Set the planned annual volume of output and the actual fulfillment of the planned target.

population index,

where is the wage fund,

Then the number of employees in the planned period:

The turnout number is determined by the formula:

payroll

4. Determine the annual and daily output for operations. Let's use the example of washing a car.

Apply piecework wage systems to workers:

2 categories - simple piecework (1 person),

3 categories - piecework bonus (bonus 15% of the tariff earnings) (1 person),

4 categories - progressive piecework (progressive piecework rate is more than a simple piecework wage of a working section to take 10% of the basic wage fund (2 people).

Pay scale for basic production workers

Tariff coefficient

Hourly tariff rate worker of the 1st category - 32 rub./h.

Annual wage fund of an employee of the 2nd category =

RUB 62,711.81

Annual wage fund of an employee of the 3rd category =

RUB 81,734.39

Annual wage fund of an employee 4 categories =

RUB 230,465.89

Annual wage fund = 62,711.81 +81,734.39 +230,465.89 = 374,912.09 rubles.

Average monthly salary =

6. Determine the total earnings of the brigade for the month with the collective organization of labor, using the piece-bonus wage system (the amount of the bonus is 30% of the tariff earnings of the brigade). To calculate the tariff earnings, the number of hours worked is taken equal to efficient fund time per month. The brigade includes workers 2 ranks, 3 ranks, 4 ranks.

Effective working time fund per month = 1,633.12 hours / 12 months.

Salary of the employee of the i category =

Salary of an employee 2 categories =

Wages of employees of the 3rd category =

The salary of an employee 4 categories =

The total earnings of the brigade = 6,793.61 + 7,699.62 + 13,587.56 = 28,080.79 rubles.

7. Determine the total earnings of the working team for each operation as the sum of the following components:

a) tariff earnings, distributed without taking into account the coefficient of labor participation (KTU);

b) piecework earnings and a bonus distributed taking into account KTU, provided that:

Workers of the 2nd category were assigned KTU = 0.95; in fact, each worker worked an average of 190 hours per month;

Workers of the 3rd category were assigned KTU = 1.05; in fact, each worker worked an average of 180 hours per month;

Workers of the 4th category were assigned KTU = 1.2; in fact, each worker worked an average of 170 hours per month.

Initial data:

Tariff earnings of the brigade for a month without KTU;

Hourly tariff rate corresponding to the i-th category of the operation being performed;

The number of hours worked per month, workers, corresponding to the i-th category of the operation performed.

a) tariff earnings, distributed without taking into account the coefficient of labor participation (KTU):

7,296+7,833.6+15,993.6= 31,123.2 rubles.

b) piecework earnings and a bonus distributed taking into account KTU

34,348.8 rubles.

Piecework earnings of the brigade =

To calculate the piecework earnings of the brigade, we calculate the piecework wages brigades.

Number of jobs = hours worked per month / time per unit of work

Piecework earnings of the brigade == 38,240 - 34,348.8 = 3,891.2 rubles

34,348.8 + 3,891.2 +5,152.32=43,392.32 rubles.

(Bonus 15% of the tariff salary).

Conclusion

production operation, production systems all levels are implemented organized labor of people. The essence of labor organization is to create an optimal interaction between working people, tools and objects of labor based on the expedient organization of work systems (jobs), taking into account human productivity and needs. The organization of labor is aimed at creating the most favorable working conditions, maintaining and supporting the working capacity of workers at a high level, increasing the degree of attractiveness of their work and achieving full utilization of the means of production.

In other words, the organization of labor is a set of technical, organizational, sanitary and hygienic measures that ensure more efficient use of working time, equipment, production skills and creative abilities of each member of the team, the elimination of heavy manual labor and the implementation of beneficial effects on the human body.

The purpose of the organization of labor consists of two interconnected parts:

Increase the profitability of the enterprise or efficiency working system, that is, to produce more products of good quality at low costs;

Humanize labor by reducing the high burden on workers and improving labor safety.

In a market economy, at all levels of management, economic and socio-psychological tasks can be identified regarding the improvement of labor organization.

Economic tasks provide for achieving maximum savings in living labor, increasing productivity, reducing production costs and providing services of adequate quality.

Bibliography

1. Vladimirova, L. P. Labor Economics [Text] / Vladimirova L. P - M .: Dashkov and Kyo, 2007. - 299 p.

2. Genkin, B.M. Organization, rationing and wages at industrial enterprises [Text]: Textbook / B.M. Genkin. - M.: Publishing house: "NORMA", 2010. - 400 p.

3. Zhukov, L. Labor Economics [Text] / Zhukov L.-M.: Economics, 2007. - 304 p.

4. The classical period of the development of ideas about labor [Electronic resource] - Access mode: http://motivtruda.ru/klassiki--o-trude.htm, free

5. Labor process and its main elements [Electronic resource] - Access mode: http://www.loskutov.org/Osnova/chap_4.htm, free

6. Usynina, T.S. Workshop on labor economics: tutorial/ T. S. Usynina, E.G. Skobeleva.-Yoshkar-Ola: Mari State Technical University, 2011. - 176 p.

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INTRODUCTION

§ 1. "ECONOMIC MAN"

§ 2. "TECHNOLOGICAL" MAN

§ 3. "BIOLOGICAL" MAN

§ 4. "SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL" MAN

§ 5. "SOCIO-POLITICAL" WORKER

INTRODUCTION

Until the end of the 19th century, the economy as a whole and its most advanced part, industry, developed without taking into account the social parameters of their development. They tried to pump out the maximum possible from the worker - by increasing the working day to 16, and sometimes up to 18 hours, through the exploitation of female and child labor. Even the great technical innovations of the 19th century had little to do with how to connect man and machine: in the existing conditions, adapting to technology was the concern of the worker. The complete disregard for the human factor was complemented by the desire of employers to ensure total control over workers, to improve the methods and methods of supervision in the activities of foremen and other production managers. This horrific life, and especially work in production, was reflected in numerous works of the 19th century (see, for example, Engels' work "The Condition of the Working Class in England" and the amazing life of workers in the novels of Ch. Dickens, E. Zola, etc.).

But by the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, the idea objectively matured - to turn to those reserves that lie in the employee himself, to arouse his interest in effective and efficient activities. It was a truly revolutionary, cardinal step, changing the whole situation in production. The discovery (scientific and practical) of the role of consciousness and behavior of people made it possible to understand, assimilate, and then use the personal capabilities of an employee to increase production efficiency. This discovery is milestone in the development of the economy, in the knowledge and application of the social reserves of labor.

The sociology of labor focuses on the knowledge of the capabilities of the worker, the conditions for their implementation, ways to reconcile personal interests with public interests in the process of production activity.

In the course of the historically conditioned objective process of the development of material production, human capabilities were gradually realized to achieve more and more significant results that elevate society and man himself in their interaction with nature. It is this approach that makes it possible to trace how ideas about the social reserves of production expanded and how these reserves were used in the life of society. “... The history of industry and the established objective existence of industry are an open book of human essential forces, human psychology that has sensibly appeared before us, which until now has been considered not in its connection with the essence of man, but always only from the point of view of some external relation of utility ... In ordinary, material industry ... we have in front of us under the guise of sensual, alien, useful objects ... the materialized essential forces of man.

Therefore, the opportunity to “flip through” this book of life is of great interest: how, when and under what circumstances the social facets of labor were revealed to science and practice, how they developed, how new ones were discovered, how the enrichment of those already known, but having serious reserves, took place on a new round of functioning. production.

§ 1. "ECONOMIC MAN"

For the first time, the idea of ​​addressing the social reserves of production in its full form was substantiated by such an outstanding organizer of production and scientists as F. Taylor (1856–1915). It was he who not only expressed the idea of ​​the need to interest the employee in the results of his work (thoughts such as wishes, as an ideal, as a theoretical search, were expressed before him), but he scientifically substantiated and brought it to life, tested it in practice, which found reflected in his work, published in 1894 and devoted to the wage system in production.

Taylor's appeal to the material interest of the worker brought success in his practical activities. Many years of approbation of this idea allowed him to formulate a number of features, which later were embodied in the concept of "economic man". To name some of his constituent ideas: do more work for more pay and in less time; to reward good, not any work; it is harmful both to underpay and overpay an employee; you need to take care of the motivation of the employee to a highly paid job (“and you can”), etc.

The Taylorist approach began to spread rapidly. But his ideas did not remain unchanged - they were improved, supplemented, new reserves were found for them. In G. Ford, they found expression in the development of how to stimulate highly efficient labor in a conveyor production environment. The problems of remuneration also worried such prominent representatives scientific organization labor, as A. Fayol, G. Church, G. Emerson.

In the 1920s, Soviet scientists A.K. Tastev (1882-1941), P.M. Kerzhentsev (1881-1940), O.A. practice, it is especially necessary to pay attention to the results associated with the Stakhanov movement, and to such a little-known fact that A. Stakhanov, who exceeded the norm for cutting coal, earned 200 rubles on this night shift. instead of the usual 23-30 rubles. How much he earned, so much he received. This was a concrete implementation of the principle "to each according to his work." By the way, this principle of high material interest was characteristic of the first years of the Stakhanov movement, and then replaced and supplanted by various forms of falsely interpreted moral encouragement.

The tragedy of the Soviet economy was the constantly repeated fact of ignoring the material interest of the worker, although all the economic managers and scientists who constantly think and care about the future have repeatedly raised this issue and even tried to solve it. Suffice it to recall the Shchekino experiment that began in the mid-60s at the Azot research and production association, which lasted 17 years (!) This experiment, based on the principle of combining jobs and higher wages, gave significant shifts in the growth of labor productivity and production efficiency, but was ingloriously failed due to the inertia of the system, the bureaucracy of officials and the lack of a normal reaction to the need for innovation.

The same fate awaited the experiment at the Iliysky state farm, in the Akhchi department in the late 60s - early 70s, where, through the efforts of its organizer I.N. Khudenko, an impressive result was achieved in agricultural production with a high material interest of workers, which allowed to significantly reduce the cost of grain. However, Khudenko, accused of acquisitiveness and embezzlement of public funds, was removed from work, convicted and ended his life in prison.

Under these conditions, a formidable pre-crisis phenomenon, the alienation of labor, began to gain momentum. It was constantly growing. Between 1962 and 1976, the number of people who avoided positive or negative job evaluations rose from 3 percent to 30 percent.

During the years of perestroika, a number of steps were taken to use such an orientation of economic consciousness and behavior as the motive for high wages. Numerous searches appeared: brigade contracts in industry and construction, undressed units in agriculture, and some others. However, these attempts were doomed to failure - on the one hand, they did not take into account the need to change property relations, on the other hand, they did not take into account the real motivation of the consciousness and behavior of production workers.

In general, a big deal was ruined: not only was the channel of personal initiative of workers blocked, but the production team was alienated from solving one of the problems that concern people - the stimulation of labor. After all, the sociological aspect of the brigade contract and lease relations was that the opinion of the team was involved in assessing the contribution of the worker to the affairs of production, his real participation in the performance of the task was “weighed”, which could never be fully provided for by any regulatory documents. It is the team that is called upon to answer the question of the quality of work of an employee in specific production conditions. Strengthening the principles of self-government directly affects the increase in labor efficiency, the development of high responsibility for personal and collective results.

As studies by factory sociologists in the 1960s and 1980s showed, within the framework of state ownership, few people managed to overcome this opposition of pay for various types of labor. The reigning equalization depreciated the work of highly skilled workers and specialists and did not stimulate the search for reserves among low-skilled workers. The change in socio-political conditions in connection with the emergence of diverse forms of ownership in the 1990s in many ways makes it possible to remove this contradiction, although it, in turn, gives rise to other problems, manifested in the growth of enormous social differentiation and expressed in a sharp and far from justified gap in the level of provision of various social groups.

At the same time, if we generalize the experience of using the reserves of the “economic man” available in the economic life of many countries, then in its most general form it went through several stages, remaining relevant at the present time. At the first, "Taylor" stage, attention was paid to enabling a person to earn, to receive more reward for as much work as possible. At the second stage, starting from the 30s of the 20th century, the individual needs of the employee and, accordingly, orientation towards their satisfaction are increasingly placed on the basis of incentives. This approach made it possible to take into account the specific situation more flexibly and respond more clearly and substantively to the desires and interests of people.

Since the 60s, the factor of social needs (the third stage) began to assert itself more and more powerfully, when material remuneration was oriented not only to the needs of the employee, but also to his family, not only to meet current or immediate goals, but also for the long term.

And most importantly, the current situation shows that the era of the "cheap worker" economy is ending (remaining typical for the countries of Asia, Africa and partially former socialist countries). The burden of the “expensive worker” becomes a reality, which means significant labor costs at a very high level of labor productivity and production efficiency.

It could be argued that only those enterprises that follow the path of development of the TOYOTA PRODUCTION SYSTEM standards implement and develop the Production System in its true sense. But we want to emphasize that the concept of "Production system" includes all the tools, methods, practices, approaches, philosophies and concepts of development, management and optimization of production that have arisen as a result of the evolution of production management practices (organization of production).

To see this, let's take a short digression into history.

16th century

1500s - Mass production. The Venetian Arsenal* launches an assembly line on the water to build boats that are moved between standard workstations in the process of being finalized. Perhaps this is the first example of a flow in history?

18 CENTURY

1780 - The concept of interchangeable parts. In the armament of the French army, the use of interchangeable parts is introduced - the forerunner of the formation of in-line production in large quantities.

1799 - Automatic production of simple parts. French engineer Marc Brunel invents equipment for the automatic production of the simplest parts (for example, rope blocks, for ships of the Royal Navy of England). Equipment mechanisms are driven by water, there is no need for manual labor.

19TH CENTURY

1822 - Automated production of complex parts. Inventor Thomas Blanchard from the Springfield Arms Factory (USA) develops 17 machines for the production of gun stocks without the use of manual labor. During processing, the parts moved around the room from one equipment to another. Probably the first example of production in "cells"?

1860s - Large-scale production of replacement parts. Samuel Colt's armory in Hatford, Connecticut is said to have produced revolvers in large quantities with fully interchangeable parts. A later study by David Hounshell in 1984 indicates that replacement parts were only made for special weapons designed to promote sales. Revolvers produced for the general public still required hand-fitting. The problem of factory production of completely replaceable parts without "fitting" will remain relevant for industrialists for another half century.

1880s - Moving cutting lines. Midwestern American meatpacking plants feature conveyors that smoothly move carcasses from worker to worker to separate the meat from the bones. A good example for future innovators, problem solving creation of moving production lines.

1890s - Scientific Management . American engineer and founder of the scientific organization of labor and management, Frederick Taylor, analyzes work processes in search of the best way to perform any task. It introduces a piecework bonus, "scientifically" assigning the role of an incentive to efficient work to wages and linking complex production chains through a well-documented path for each detail in production. It also offers standard cost accounting for production, including overheads, creating, in fact, the main tools for managing mass production.


20TH CENTURY

1902 - Jidoka(autonomization). Sakichi Toyoda invents a device that stops work loom upon detection of a defect in the tissue. With further improvements, the invention allowed the equipment to work autonomously without the control of workers (who were most often children), which opened the way for multi-machine operations.

1908 - Really Replaceable Parts. Henry Ford introduces the modular car, taking a significant leap into the era of interchangeable parts with a standard calibration system used throughout the factory and at the supplier sites. "At my plant, no fitting is required," Ford stated.

1913-1914 - Moving assembly line with the manufacture of parts. The Henry Ford plant in Highland Park, Michigan is the first to introduce " mass production» by arranging the equipment according to the production process (for example, a stamping press, followed by a paint booth, followed by a final assembly area, etc.). In addition, the speed of movement of all conveyors was guided by the final assembly line.

1920s

1924 - Quick changeover. The Type G loom, introduced by Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, enables automatic shuttle changes without stopping the loom. This idea eventually leads to the modernization of all equipment of Toyota Motor Company, which spun off from the parent company and subsequently absorbed it.

1926 - Mass production. Launching the factory complex Ford River Rouge Complex, Henry Ford expands the range of products and introduces the term "mass production". While the movement of materials is automated with the help of many kilometers of conveyors, the various stages of creating parts (stamping, welding, painting, etc.) are organized into so-called "process villages" - places where equipment of the same type is grouped or similar processes are performed. Then this type of organization of production was adopted at more than 50 factories, and subsequently received a truly worldwide distribution.

1930s

1930 - Takt time. For the first time, German aircraft companies introduce the concept of "takt time" to synchronize the movement of aircraft through the shop during assembly operations: each major section or the entire aircraft must move to the next station after a set period of time. To determine the exact takt time, it is necessary to accurately analyze the cycle time that passes from the beginning of the process to its completion. Mitsubishi learned about this system through a technology partnership with German aircraft manufacturers and brought it to Japanese manufacturing, where Toyota also took advantage of it.

1937 - Just- in- Time(Right on time). When Kiichiro Toyoda founded Toyota Motor Company, he had the idea of ​​just-in-time deliveries of parts and accessories. But the lack of stability in production and relationships with suppliers prevented the implementation of his plans.

1941-1945 - Training within the industry. The U.S. military department provides job briefing, work organization and labor relations training, and programs to educate and train millions of workers in industries related to military industry. These methods were also introduced to Japan after the end of the war and eventually adopted by Toyota as a standard of operation.

1950s - Kanban and Supermarkets. Taiichi Ohno develops a practical method for realizing Kiichiro Toyoda's just-in-time delivery of parts.

1960s -Lean-management. Under the leadership of Agee Toyoda, Toyota Motor Company is gradually developing a production management system with a new approach to solving production problems, leadership, production activities, supplier cooperation, customer support, product development and production processes.

1960 - Deming Prize. The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers establishes the Deming Prize to encourage acceptance Japanese companies statistical methods for quality assurance and use Deming cycle: Plan-Do-Check-Act (Planning-Execution-Check-Impact).

1965 - Mass production management. Alfred Sloan publishes a book « My years at General Motors» (“My Years with General Motors”) for a detailed description of the management principle based on the systems of indicators (manage-by-metrics), developed by him during his work at General Motors from the 1920s to the 1950s. Just at this time, Toyota entered the world market, becoming a serious rival to GM.

1965 - Quality as a key element of the management system. Toyota receives the Deming Award after a years-long campaign to train each of its managers to solve production problems using the scientific method based on the Deming cycle.

1970s

1973 - SystematizationTPS. Fujio Cho and Y. Sugimori, together with colleagues, create the first manual for the Toyota Production System for internal use.

1977 - Start spreading the basicsTPS. Fujio Cho, Y. Sugimori and others publish the first article in English - in a British engineering magazine - explaining the logic behind the Toyota Production System.

1979 - First academic research. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology launches the Future of the Automotive Program (since 1985, the International Motor Vehicle Research Program) to explore new methods for developing and manufacturing Japanese products.

1980s

1982 - Full descriptionTPS. Yasuhiro Monden's book "Toyota Production System" has been translated into English language and published in the USA by the Institute of Industrial Engineers, which was the first description of the entire Toyota Production System provided to the world community.

1983 - Direct distribution. Toyota and General Motors set up a joint venture near San Francisco, New United Motors Manufacturing (NUMMI), which has become a platform for direct dissemination of TPS ideas outside of Japan.

1987 - EmergenceLean. John Krafcik, a young scientist at MIT's International Automotive Research Program, proposes a new term for Toyota's manufacturing system, product development, supplier collaboration, customer support, quality management, and management practices: LEAN.

late 1980s - Widespread. Numerous writers (Robert Hall, Richard Schonberger, Norman Bodek) and consultants (former members of the Autonomous research group Toyota, such as Yoshiki Iwata and Chihiro Nakao) are promoting LEAN methods far beyond Japan.


1990s - Publications.
Numerous articles, books and manuals have been published on production description, product development, supplier collaboration, customer support and global management system, initiated by leading companies in Japan and providing convincing evidence competitive advantage proposed system (“The Machine That Changed the World”, “Lean Thinking”, “Learning to See”, etc.). Describes key concepts (value, value stream, flow production, pull, continuous improvement, etc.), highlights the history of companies in Europe, Japan and North America, which, like Toyota, have achieved success in introducing a new concept of production, develops recommendations applicable in any enterprise.

21 CENTURY

2000s - Global promotion. Dozens of organizations around the world are promoting the new philosophy of production, management and development through publications, seminars and training programs.

2007 - TOYOTA- №1. For the first time in history, Toyota overtakes General Motors to become the world's largest automaker and the most successful commercial organization of the past 50 years.

The unity of different concepts in their pursuit of a common goal - the creation of a flexible, efficient, competitive production - is confirmed by history itself. That is why the business portal "Production Management" has taken the path of combining various concepts under the auspices of the upper concept - "Production System", as most industry and regional alliances, associations, unions in Germany, Japan, and the USA do. And therefore, to the enterprises that implement the Production System, we include all those who develop:

Quality management system (not limited to ISO);

production system;

Logistics system (internal and external);

TOYOTA PRODUCTION SYSTEM;

Principles of Lean Manufacturing;

Lean management approaches;

KAIZEN, 5S, TPM, KANBAN, JIT systems;

PPS system (planning and production management);

SCM concept (supply chain management);

Cost optimization and loss minimization system.

Over the years, the concept of Production Systems has already proven itself, and its success in increasing the efficiency of the enterprise does not require proof. It has gone beyond the automotive industry, finding its application in energy, metallurgy, agriculture, military, chemical, food and many other industries. Over the past decades, the concept has been developing at a rapid pace, and companies in the USA and Germany, whose economy is built on small and medium-sized businesses, have achieved particular success in this direction. It is these enterprises operating in a competitive environment that have now become the driving force for the further evolution of Production Systems into new forms that better meet the changing requirements of the economic environment - Holistic, Flexible or Transformational Production Systems. And this development is unstoppable.

So you should not elevate the Toyota Production System to the rank of a universal one, but learn to choose from a variety of tools, concepts, methods and approaches, combined in a capacious and multifaceted concept of "Production System", what will suit your enterprise - with its unique conditions and tasks, history and strategy, strengths and weaknesses.

Note:

Venetian Arsenal- an integrated enterprise for the construction and equipment of warships, including forges, shipyards, armories and various workshops, founded in Venice in 1104, to equip warships required for the Crusades, in which the Venetian Republic participated.

Text: Natalia Konoshenko

Adapted from Lean Enterprise Institute, "Breakthrough Moments in Lean"

Before human reflex labor, having arisen, in its development, sooner or later, inevitably had to reach such a limit beyond which its further improvement was impossible without the improvement of the tools used, i.e. without a transition to the manufacture of tools. The evolution of pre-human adaptive labor has made this transition not only necessary, but also possible, having prepared all the conditions for it.

In the activities of modern great apes (and not only great apes), one can observe diverse acts of "processing" various objects with the help of teeth, hands and other organs of the body (Ladygina-Kote, 1959, p. 92 pp., 127 pp.). Under experimental conditions there have been repeatedly observed cases of monkeys using objects that were adapted to perform this function by this kind of processing as means of labor (Kehler, 1930; G. Roginsky, 1948; Vatsuro, 1948; Ladygina-Kote, 1959). for the processing of objects cannot be characterized as labor, because they do not have tools. for example, monkeys used sticks to break windows, electric light bulbs, pick at walls, etc. (Khilchenko, 1953, p. 52; Ladygina-Kote, 1959, With. 128 - 130, etc.). These acts also cannot be called labor, because they are not aimed at mastering the objects of needs and are purely playful in nature. To this we can add that as a result of such acts there are no objects that would be used in the future as tools of labor. Other acts of indirect processing of objects noted in monkeys are not actions for the manufacture of means of labor, although some of them, such as breaking nuts with stones by capuchins, can be called acts of reflex labor.

The use by the monkey as a means of labor of an object that would have been adapted to the performance of this function by the previous process of mediated processing has never been recorded by any researcher. All actions noted in monkeys for the "production" of means of labor are not acts of prehuman labor, all acts of reflex labor noted in them are not actions for the "production" of means of labor. Labor acts, which would represent actions for the "production" of tools, are completely absent in monkeys, although the possibility of achieving their implementation under experimental conditions, of course, cannot be ruled out.

The emergence and development of reflex labor firmly attached the functions of the means of labor to certain objects and made these objects necessary conditions for existence. Having become among prehumans the most important and necessary means of satisfying needs, the instrument of labor itself became an object of need. The prehumans had a need for tools and a desire to have tools and use them. This need could not be satisfied by any object, because not every object can successfully function as a means of labor. Prehumans chose from many objects those that could successfully fulfill the role of a tool of labor. These searches may not always lead to luck. Therefore, pre-humans, along with the search for suitable objects, inevitably had to deal with the adaptation of existing things to the performance of the functions of tools by pre-processing them.

This processing was originally carried out, probably, only by the organs of the body. But such processing could not be developed. Already the tree to a small extent lends itself to processing with the naked hands. As for the stone, its processing without the use of labor is practically impossible. The inefficiency of direct processing prompted a transition to indirect processing, to processing with the help of objects, to labor processing. The systematic use of tools, in the course of which the skills of their varied use were developed, made such a transition possible.

It can be assumed that initially only wood was processed, from which such hunting tools as clubs were made. Bones and jaws of large animals could be used as tools for working wood (Dart, 1957). However, the use of bones for wood processing could hardly have been developed. The only tools suitable for woodworking could only be stone ones. It was not only the need for tools suitable for woodworking that pushed the prehumans to use stone. Stone tools, more than any other, were suitable for performing such operations as skinning a dead animal, butchering its carcass, crushing bones (Tolstov, 1931, p. 79).

Most pieces of stone found in nature are of little use as working tools. Finding a stone fit to function as a tool is not always easy. This circumstance made it necessary to process the stone itself, to manufacture from it. tools suitable for processing wood and performing the above operations.

At first, stone processing was extremely primitive. Prehumans, apparently, simply hit one stone against another and picked up randomly obtained pieces of stone convenient for use as tools. The original stone processing technique was most likely the breaking technique. The opinion that breaking and splitting was the oldest method of stone processing is held by many archaeologists (Obermayer, 1913, p. 131; Ravdonikas, 1939.1, p. 194; Zamyatnin, 1951, p. 117; Panichkina, 1953, p. 13, 26; S. Semenov, 1957, p. 56). Having arisen as the initial method of stone processing, breaking was preserved for a long time along with more advanced methods, and among some peoples it has survived almost to our time. So, for example, the Tasmanians made tools by hitting a rock or other stone with a stone and choosing the most suitable ones from the resulting pieces. Throwing one stone at another lying on the ground, the Tasmanian jumped back, spreading his legs wide so as not to be wounded by fragments (Roth Ling, 1899, p. 151; Piotrovsky, 1933, p. 168). Along with breaking, the Tasmanians also had more advanced techniques (Roth Ling, 1899, p. 150-152; Piotrovsky, 1933, p. 169; Efimenko, 1934a, p. 149-150).

The degree of suitability of the pieces of stone obtained by breaking for functioning as means of labor, the degree of perfection of the tools obtained in this way depended on the case. The results of such acts of making tools could not initially qualitatively differ from the results of the "processing" that stones could undergo under natural conditions, without the intervention of prehumans. Therefore, tools of this kind cannot be distinguished from pieces of stone that have undergone natural processing - eoliths. But although the tools obtained by the method of breaking could not originally differ from the pieces of stone found in nature, nevertheless, the appearance of the breaking technique was a huge advance, because it could deliver pieces of stone suitable for use as tools in much larger quantities than they could find in nature.

Prehumans, when they needed tools, didn't have to wander around in search of suitable stone shards or boulders. They could satisfy this need of theirs by breaking one stone after another and choosing from a large number of pieces received those that could serve as tools. Although pieces of stone suitable for use as tools constituted an insignificant part of all the stone fragments obtained as a result of this kind of processing, nevertheless, in this way, the need for tools could be satisfied sooner and more easily than by searching for such pieces of stone in nature.

The acquisition of a comparatively large number of stone tools suitable for working wood made the systematic production of wooden tools, which were primarily hunting tools. The use on a large scale of manufactured wooden hunting tools could not but contribute to the success of hunting. The result was an urgent need for manufactured wooden and thereby manufactured stone tools. The progress of hunting activity and directly demanded further development production of stone tools. More successful than before, hunting began to bring in an increasing number of carcasses of large animals, the butchering of which could only be successfully carried out with the help of artificial stone tools.

As a result of all this, the production of tools, both wooden and stone, gradually turned from an accident than it was before, into a rule, and then became a necessity. With the transformation of random, sporadic acts of production into necessity, with the beginning of the systematic and mass production of tools, a sharp turning point occurred in the development of reflex prehuman labor. If earlier reflex labor was the activity of appropriating objects of biological needs with the help of ready-made natural tools, now it has turned into a unity of two types of activity: the activity of making tools of labor and the activity of appropriating objects of needs with the help of these manufactured tools.

The activity of appropriating objects of need with the help of tools was animal labor both in form and in content. It was animal labor in content, for it was an adaptation to external environment; it was animal in form, for it was a reflex activity. Tool-making activities were also reflexive. In this sense, it was also reflex labor, animal labor. But, not differing in form from the previous activity in the use of natural tools, it differed from it in its content. In its content, it was not an animal activity, but a human one, it was not an animal labor, but a human one, for it was not the appropriation of ready-made objects of needs existing in nature, but the production of new objects that did not exist in nature, not adaptation to the external environment, but its transformation.

Thus, the original production activity was an extremely controversial phenomenon. In its content it was already human labor, but in its form it still remained animal labor, pre-human. The new content, human in its essence, was clothed in the old, animal in its essence, reflex form. Clothed in the old, animal form, the new content was human only in potential, in possibility, and not in reality. The original activity of making tools was human labor only in potentiality, in possibility, but in reality it was reflexive, pre-human labor. But, remaining pre-human, reflex labor, it represented a new form of it, different from the activity that preceded it in the use of natural tools. Two main stages can be distinguished in the development of prehuman reflex labor. The first stage is the era of the existence of such reflex labor, which is animal both in form and in content, labor is completely animal. The second stage is the epoch of the existence of such reflex labor, which is animal in form, human in content, which, while remaining in reality animal labor, pre-human, in the possibility was already human labor. Unlike purely animal, appropriating, adaptive labor, this form of reflex prehuman labor could be called transformative, productive prehuman labor.

The transition from the stage of adaptive reflex labor to the stage of transformative labor could not but affect those beings whose activity was the pre-human pile. Beings whose activity was transforming reflex labor could not but differ from beings whose activity was adaptive prehuman labor. Unlike the latter, they not only appropriated ready-made means of life, but also produced objects that did not exist in nature, not only adapted to the environment, but also transformed it. In this sense, they were already human. However, they cannot be called people, even developing ones, because their behavior was a reflex activity and, like any reflex activity, was determined by biological and only biological needs, instincts. They were not social beings, even emerging ones, but purely biological. In that sense they were animals. But these were such biological beings, such animals that came close to the line separating them from people, stood on this line. Although in reality they remained animals, biological beings, in potential, in possibility they were already human beings, social beings. Characteristic of these creatures was a sharp contradiction between their content, in many respects, already purely human activity and its purely animal mechanism, their animal morphological organization.

To designate these creatures, even more than to designate their predecessors, the term “prehumans” (proanthropes, prehominids) is suitable. They directly, immediately preceded the emerging people. adaptive reflex labor, we will call prehumans of both those and others: some - early prehumans, others - late. A common feature that makes the first and second related and allows us to designate them by one term is that the main activity of both of them was prehuman reflex labor. The difference between them is that early prehumans only appropriated the objects of needs, only adapted to the environment, while later prehumans not only appropriated ready-made natural objects, but also produced new ones, not only adapted to the environment, but also transformed it.

The assumption of the existence of the stage of late prehumans finds its confirmation in the factual material, primarily in that which was delivered by the discoveries of the famous English explorer L. Leakey in the Oldowai Gorge in Tanganyika.

In 1959, an almost complete skull of a creature called the Zinjanthropus was discovered in the Oldowai I layer. Together with the skull, the remains of many small animals (rodents, lizards, etc.), bones of pigs and antelopes, as well as pebble tools belonging to the so-called Oldowan culture were found, which allowed L. Leakey to make the statement that the zinjanthropus was a creature that made tools and hunted animals. The study of the morphological features of the skull led L. Leakey to the conclusion that Zinjanthropus should be included in the Australopithecus subfamily as a special genus, different from both the Australopithecus genus and Paranthropus (Leakey, 1959, 1960a).

However, not all scientists agreed with the opinion of L. Lika. Most of them considered it more correct to classify Zinjanthropus as a Paranthropus (Washburn and Howell. 1960; Oakley, 1962; Robinson, 1962, 1963; Mayr, 1963; Napier, 1964b). In one of the works of J. Robinson, the zinjanthropus is characterized not only as a typical paranthropus, but also as a vegetarian (1962, p. 485), which, of course, does not agree well with the idea of ​​him as a creature that made tools. Some scientists, in particular V.P. Yakimov (1960c), directly stated that the morphological features of Zinjanthropus are extremely contrary to the ability to make tools attributed to him. New discoveries later forced L. Lika himself to reconsider his views on Zinjanthropus.

In subsequent years, in the same layer of Oldowai I, but in a horizon located below where the find described above was made, the remains of a creature were found, which gradually got the name "prezinjan trail" (Leakey, 1960b, 196 la, 1961b) Already in rather early publications, L. Leakey (1961b. 1963a) suggested that the prezinjanthropus, which differs from the zinjanthropus in lesser specialization and a larger brain size, is a representative of not Australopithecus, but a hominin, and that it is in him that one should see the true creator pebble tools, not only those that were found with him, but also associated with the remains of Zinjanthropus.As for the Zinjanthropus itself, it was the object of hunting by the early hominins.This explains the connection of the skull with tools and animal bones (1963a , pp. 453-455) Subsequently, the remains of creatures similar, according to L. Lika and a number of other scientists, to the prezinjanthropus, were also found in the horizon lying below the one in which it was discovered prezinjanthropus, and in the one to which the find of zinjanthropus belongs, and finally in the lower horizons of Oldoway II (Leakey and Leakey, 1964). All this gave rise to L. Leakey, F. Tobias and J. Napier (Leakey, Tobias, Napier, 1964;

Tobias, 1964) to make the claim that all these finds form the new kind of the genus Homo, to which they gave the name "Homo habilis".

However, this statement was met with criticism by a number of scientists (Campbell, 1964; Robinson, 1965). Soon, one of the authors of the joint work mentioned above was forced to somewhat reconsider his positions. In an article published in the same year by F. Tobias and G. Koenigswald (Tobias, Koenigswald 1964), it was concluded that the remains from Oldoway I, on the one hand, and from the lower horizons of Oldoway II, on the other hand, belong to more than one type of hominid , but to two that are different from each other. The creatures from the lower horizons of Oldowai II belong to the same stage of human evolution as Pithecanthropus IV and the Thelanthropus, whom most researchers regard as the earliest humans. The creatures from Oldowy I represent a more primitive form. They form a special group of hominins, which have already risen above the Australopithecus stage, but have not yet reached the Pithecanthropus stage. Morphological data allow us to consider them as being on the hominid line, going from Australopithecus Africanus and possibly leading to Pithecanthropus. To the same stage, following the stage of Australopithecus and the preceding stage of Pithecanthropus, should, according to

F.Tobias and G.Koenigswald, the ancient Javanese meganthrope is also attributed. On the issue of the position of this group in the systematics, the opinions of the authors of the article differed. G. Koenigswald considers it as a special genus or at least a sub-genus, F. Tobias - as a species of the genus Homo.

J. Robinson (1965) spoke much more decisively. In his opinion, there are no grounds for singling out the Oldowan finds in special kind(p. 121). Just like F. Tobias and G. Koenigswald, he distinguishes among them two morphologically distinct groups, one of which is formed by finds in Oldoway I, and the other - finds in the lower horizons of Oldoway II. The remains from Oldowai II show a great affinity for the telanthropus, undoubtedly, according to J. Robinson, being a man, and belong to the same stage as the latter, the earliest stage in human evolution. They represent the earliest forms of Homo erectus. The remains from Oldowai I show closeness not to the Pithecanthropus, but to the African Australopithecus and represent a group of Australopithecus, only a few advanced in their development in comparison with the rest. In morphological terms, the similarity between Australopithecus africanus and the remains from Oldoway I, on the one hand, and Homo erectus and the remains from Oldoway II, on the other, is much greater than between the finds at Oldoway I and the finds at Oldoway II. Morphological data speak in favor of assigning Oldowai I and Oldoway II to two different genera (p. 123). However, at the same time, there are features that bring together the finds in Oldoway I with the finds in Oldoway II and distinguish them from other Australopithecus. The creatures from Oldowai I made tools, while all the other Australopithecus used them only (p. 123). They were at the stage of transition from the use of natural tools, which was essential for Australopithecus, to the manufacture of tools, characteristic of man (p. 123).

Apart from the fact that the creatures from Oldowai I are closer in their phology to australopithecines than to humans, the supporters of the isolation of Homo habilis could not pass by. So, for example, J. Napier (1964a, 1964c) directly admits that the hands of the creatures from Oldowai I have a “strangely inhuman” character (1964b, p. 88) and, considered by themselves, cannot in any way suggest their involvement to the manufacture of tools, even as primitive as the Oldowan ones (1964a, pp. 35-36), that the volume of the brain and many other features of the skull and dental system of these creatures, in principle, do not go beyond the limits of variations possible in Australopithecus (1964b, p. 89 As a result, in an effort to substantiate the allocation of Homo habilis, J. Napier emphasizes not so much the morphological differences between the creatures from Oldoway I and Australopithecus, but the undoubted fact that, unlike Australopithecus, they made tools, and not just used them.

Thus, the materials currently available on the creatures from Oldowai I allow us to draw two main conclusions: first, that they made tools; secondly, that in their morphological appearance they were still australopithecines, although they had already advanced towards man. This is exactly what the later prehumans were supposed to be. The productive activity that had arisen was not yet able at this stage to substantially transform the morphological organization of the prehumans, but it was already bound to leave its imprint on it to some extent. In favor of the assumption that the basis for a certain difference in the morphological organization of the creatures from Oldoway I from the morphological appearances of both Australopithecus and Paranthropus is primarily the difference in the nature of their activity from the nature of the activity of the latter, is also evidenced by the fact that there are no sufficient grounds to attribute to Australopithecus and Paranthropus the ability make tools. The finds of tools at Sterkfontein and Makapansgat belong to layers later than those in which the remains of the plesianthropus and Australopithecus Prometheus were found (Brain, Lowe, Dart, 1955; Dart, 1955b; Robinson, Mason, 1958; Robinson, 1962)1.

The discovery of the creatures from Oldowai I, together with other available data on Australopithecus, leads to the conclusion that early prehumans gave rise to two branches of development. The development of one went along the line of abandoning the herd way of life and belittling the role of prehuman labor and ended with the emergence of imaginary prehumans, the most typical representative of which is Gigantopithecus. The development of the second went along the path of transition from adaptive labor to transformative reflex labor and led to the emergence of late prehumans, representatives of which, apparently, were found in Oldowy I.

The labor activity of later prehumans was not limited to reflex production. It represented, as indicated, the unity of two types of activity: the activity of making tools and the activity of appropriating the objects of needs with the help of manufactured tools. The activity of appropriating the objects of needs with the help of artificial tools, like the activity that preceded it of appropriating the objects of needs with the help of natural tools, was not a transformation of the environment, but an adaptation to it, was animal labor not only in form, but also in content. At the same time, it differed from its predecessor. This difference consisted in the fact that it was mediated by the activity of making tools, by production activity. The activity of appropriating objects of biological needs with the help of artificial tools was an adaptation to the external environment, but one that was mediated by production, the transformation of the external environment.

As a result of the emergence of activity in the manufacture of tools and the bifurcation of a single labor activity into production and adaptation to the external environment, which appropriates success, began to increasingly depend on the level of development of production activity. The improvement of production activity has become an important condition for the improvement of activity in adapting to the external environment, in satisfying biological instincts, and has become a necessary condition for the existence of later prehumans. But the development of productive activity differed significantly from the development of adaptive labor activity.

1. The emergence of reflex production activity

Prehuman reflex labor, having arisen, in its development, sooner or later, inevitably had to reach such a limit beyond which its further improvement was impossible without the improvement of the tools used, i.e., without a transition to the manufacture of labor tools. The evolution of pre-human adaptive labor has made this transition not only necessary, but also possible, having prepared all the conditions for it.

In the activity of modern great apes (and not only great apes) one can observe diverse acts of "processing" various objects with the help of teeth, hands and other organs of the body (Ladygina-Kote, 1959, p. 92 ff., 127 ff.). Under experimental conditions there have been repeatedly observed cases of monkeys using objects that were adapted to perform this function by processing this kind of work (Kehler, 1930; G. Rotinsky, 1948; Vatsuro, 1948; Ladygina-Kots, 1959). for the processing of objects cannot be characterized as labor, because they do not have tools.In addition to direct processing, i.e. processing objects using only body organs, monkeys have individual cases of indirect processing, i.e. processing some objects with for example, monkeys used sticks to break windows, light bulbs, pick at walls, etc. (Khilchenko, 1953, p. 52; Ladygina-Kots, 195 9, p. 128–130, etc.). These acts also cannot be called labor, because they are not aimed at mastering the objects of needs and are purely playful in nature. To this we can add that as a result of such acts there are no objects that would be used in the future as tools of labor. Other acts of indirect processing of objects noted in monkeys are not actions for the manufacture of means of labor, although some of them, such as breaking nuts with stones by capuchins, can be called acts of reflex labor.

The use by the monkey as a means of labor of an object that would have been adapted to the performance of this function by the previous process of mediated processing has never been recorded by any researcher. All actions noted in monkeys for the "production" of means of labor are not acts of prehuman labor, all acts of reflex labor noted in them are not actions for the "production" of means of labor. Labor acts, which would represent actions for the "production" of tools, are completely absent in monkeys, although the possibility of achieving their implementation under experimental conditions, of course, cannot be ruled out.

The emergence and development of reflex labor firmly attached the functions of the means of labor to certain objects and made these objects necessary conditions for existence. Having become among prehumans the most important and necessary means of satisfying needs, the instrument of labor itself became an object of need. The prehumans had a need for tools and a desire to have tools and use them. This need could not be satisfied by any object, because not every object can successfully function as a means of labor. Prehumans chose from many objects those that could successfully fulfill the role of a tool of labor. These searches may not always lead to luck. Therefore, pre-humans, along with the search for suitable objects, inevitably had to deal with the adaptation of existing things to the performance of the functions of tools by pre-processing them.

This processing was originally carried out, probably, only by the organs of the body. But such processing could not be developed. Already the tree to a small extent lends itself to processing with the naked hands. As for the stone, its processing without the use of labor is practically impossible. The inefficiency of direct processing prompted a transition to indirect processing, to processing with the help of objects, to labor processing. The systematic use of tools, in the course of which the skills of their varied use were developed, made such a transition possible.

It can be assumed that initially only wood was processed, from which such hunting tools as clubs were made. Bones and jaws of large animals could be used as tools for working wood (Dart, 1957). However, the use of bones for wood processing could hardly have been developed. The only tools suitable for woodworking could only be stone ones. It was not only the need for tools suitable for woodworking that pushed the prehumans to use stone. Stone tools, more than any other, were suitable for performing such operations as skinning a dead animal, butchering its carcass, crushing bones (Tolstov, 1931, p. 79).

Most pieces of stone found in nature are of little use as working tools. Finding a stone fit to function as a tool is not always easy. This circumstance made it necessary to process the stone itself, to make tools from it suitable for working wood and performing the above operations.

At first, stone processing was extremely primitive. Prehumans, apparently, simply hit one stone against another and picked up randomly obtained pieces of stone convenient for use as tools. The original stone processing technique was most likely the breaking technique. The opinion that breaking and splitting was the oldest method of stone processing is held by many archaeologists (Obermayer, 1913, p. 131; Ravdonikas, 1939.1, p. 194; Zamyatnin, 1951, p. 117; Panichkina, 1953, p. 13, 26; S. Semenov, 1957, p. 56). Having arisen as the initial method of stone processing, breaking was preserved for a long time along with more advanced methods, and among some peoples it has survived almost to our time. So, for example, the Tasmanians made tools by hitting a rock or other stone with a stone and choosing the most suitable ones from the resulting pieces. Throwing one stone at another lying on the ground, the Tasmanian jumped back, spreading his legs wide so as not to be wounded by fragments (Roth Ling, 1899, p. 15i; Piotrovsky, 1933, p. 168). Along with breaking, the Tasmanians also had more advanced techniques (Roth Ling, 1899, p.150-152; Piotrovsky, 1933, p.169; Efimenko, 1934a, p.149-150).

The degree of suitability of the pieces of stone obtained by breaking for functioning as means of labor, the degree of perfection of the tools obtained in this way depended on the case. The results of such acts of making tools could not initially qualitatively differ from the results of the "processing" that stones could undergo under natural conditions, without the intervention of prehumans. Therefore, tools of this kind cannot be distinguished from pieces of stone that have undergone natural processing - eoliths. But although the tools obtained by the method of breaking could not originally differ from the pieces of stone found in nature, nevertheless, the appearance of the breaking technique was a huge advance, because it could deliver pieces of stone suitable for use as tools in much larger quantities than they could find in nature.

Prehumans, when they needed tools, didn't have to wander around in search of suitable stone shards or boulders. They could satisfy this need of theirs by breaking one stone after another and choosing from a large number of pieces received those that could serve as tools. Although pieces of stone suitable for use as tools constituted an insignificant part of all the stone fragments obtained as a result of this kind of processing, nevertheless, in this way, the need for tools could be satisfied sooner and more easily than by searching for such pieces of stone in nature.

The acquisition of a comparatively large number of stone tools suitable for working wood made the systematic production of wooden tools, which were primarily hunting tools. The use on a large scale of manufactured wooden hunting tools could not but contribute to the success of hunting. The result was an urgent need for manufactured wooden and thereby manufactured stone tools. The progress of hunting activities directly demanded the further development of the production of stone tools. More successful than before, hunting began to bring in an increasing number of carcasses of large animals, the butchering of which could only be successfully carried out with the help of artificial stone tools.

As a result of all this, the production of tools, both wooden and stone, gradually turned from an accident than it was before, into a rule, and then became a necessity. With the transformation of random, sporadic acts of production into necessity, with the beginning of the systematic and mass production of tools, a sharp turning point occurred in the development of reflex prehuman labor. If earlier reflex labor was the activity of appropriating objects of biological needs with the help of ready-made natural tools, now it has turned into a unity of two types of activity: the activity of making tools of labor and the activity of appropriating objects of needs with the help of these manufactured tools.

The activity of appropriating objects of need with the help of tools was animal labor both in form and in content. It was animal labor in content, for it was an adaptation to the external environment; it was animal in form, for it was a reflex activity. Tool-making activities were also reflexive. In this sense, it was also reflex labor, animal labor. But, not differing in form from the previous activity in the use of natural tools, it differed from it in its content. In its content, it was not an animal activity, but a human one, it was not an animal labor, but a human one, for it was not the appropriation of ready-made objects of needs existing in nature, but the production of new objects that did not exist in nature, not adaptation to the external environment, but its transformation.

Thus, the original production activity was an extremely controversial phenomenon. In its content it was already human labor, but in its form it still remained animal labor, pre-human. The new content, human in its essence, was clothed in the old, animal in its essence, reflex form. Clothed in the old, animal form, the new content was human only in potential, in possibility, and not in reality. The original activity of making tools was human labor only in potentiality, in possibility, but in reality it was reflexive, pre-human labor. But, remaining pre-human, reflex labor, it represented a new form of it, different from the activity that preceded it in the use of natural tools. Two main stages can be distinguished in the development of prehuman reflex labor. The first stage is the era of the existence of such reflex labor, which is animal both in form and in content, labor is completely animal. The second stage is the era of the existence of such reflex labor, which is animal in form, human in content, which, while remaining in reality animal labor, pre-human, was already human labor in the possibility. Unlike purely animal, appropriating, adaptive labor, this form of reflex prehuman labor could be called transformative, productive prehuman labor.

The transition from the stage of adaptive reflex labor to the stage of transformative labor could not but affect those beings whose activity was prehuman labor. Beings whose activity was transformative reflex labor could not but differ from beings whose activity was adaptive prehuman labor. Unlike the latter, they not only appropriated ready-made means of life, but also produced objects that did not exist in nature, not only adapted to the environment, but also transformed it. In this sense, they were already human. However, they cannot be called people, even developing ones, because their behavior was a reflex activity and, like any reflex activity, was determined by biological and only biological needs, instincts. They were not social beings, even emerging ones, but purely biological. In that sense they were animals. But these were such biological beings, such animals that came close to the line separating them from people, stood on this line. Although in reality they remained animals, biological beings, in potential, in possibility they were already human beings, social beings. Characteristic of these creatures was a sharp contradiction between their content, in many respects, already purely human activity and its purely animal mechanism, their animal morphological organization.

To designate these creatures, even more than to designate their predecessors, the term “prehumans” (proanthropes, prehominids) is suitable. They directly, immediately preceded the emerging people. adaptive reflex labor, we will call prehumans of both those and others: some - early prehumans, others - late. A common feature that makes the first and second related and allows us to designate them by one term is that the main activity of both of them was prehuman reflex labor. The difference between them is that early prehumans only appropriated the objects of needs, only adapted to the environment, while later prehumans not only appropriated ready-made natural objects, but also produced new ones, not only adapted to the environment, but also transformed it.

The assumption of the existence of the stage of late prehumans finds its confirmation in the factual material, primarily in that which was delivered by the discoveries of the famous English explorer L. Leakey in the Oldowai Gorge in Tanganyika.

In 1959, an almost complete skull of a creature called the Zinjanthropus was discovered in the Oldowai I layer. Together with the skull, the remains of many small animals (rodents, lizards, etc.), bones of pigs and antelopes, as well as pebble tools belonging to the so-called Oldowan culture were found, which allowed L. Leakey to make the statement that the zinjanthropus was a creature that made tools and hunted animals. The study of the morphological features of the skull led L. Leakey to the conclusion that Zinjanthropus should be included in the Australopithecus subfamily as a special genus, different from both the Australopithecus genus and Paranthropus (Leakey, 1959, 1960a).

However, not all scientists agreed with the opinion of L. Lika. Most of them considered it more correct to classify Zinjanthropus as Paranthropus (Washburn and Howell, 1960; Oakley, 1962; Robinson, 1962, 1963; Mayr, 1963; Napier, 1964b). In one of the works of J. Robinson, the Zinjanthropus is characterized not only as a typical paranthropus, but also as a vegetarian (1962, p. 485), which, of course, does not agree well with the idea of ​​him as a creature that made tools. Some scientists, in particular V.P. Yakimov (1960c), directly stated that the morphological features of Zinjanthropus are extremely contrary to the ability to make tools attributed to him. New discoveries later forced L. Lika himself to reconsider his views on Zinjanthropus.

In subsequent years, in the same layer of Oldowai I, but in a horizon located below where the find described above was made, the remains of a creature were found, which was gradually assigned the name "prezinjan trail" (Leakey, 1960b, 1961a, 1961b). Already in fairly early publications, L. Leakey (1961b, 1963a) suggested that the presinjanthropus, which differs from the zinjanthropus in both lesser specialization and a larger brain size, is a representative of not Australopithecus, but hominins, and that it is in him that one should see the true creator of pebble tools, and not only those that were found with him, but also associated with the remains of Zinjanthropus. As for the Zinjanthropus itself, it was the object of hunting by the early hominins. This explains the connection of the skull with tools and animal bones (1963a, 453–455) Subsequently, the remains of creatures similar, according to L. Lika and a number of other scientists, to the presinjanthropus, were also found in the horizon lying below the one in which p resinjanthropus, and in the one to which the find of zinjanthropus belongs, and finally in the lower horizons of Oldoway II (Leakey and Leakey, 1964). All this gave grounds to L. Leakey, F. Tobias and J. Napier (Leakey, Tobias, Napier, 1964; Tobias, 1964) to come up with the statement that all these findings form a new species of the genus Homo, to which they assigned the name "Homo habilis ".

However, this statement was met with criticism by a number of scientists (Campbell, 1964; Robinson, 1965). Soon, one of the authors of the joint work mentioned above was forced to somewhat reconsider his positions. In an article published in the same year by F. Tobias and G. Koenigswald (Tobias, Koenigswald 1964), it was concluded that the remains from Oldoway 1, on the one hand, and from the lower horizons of Oldoway II, on the other hand, belong to more than one type of hominid , but to two that are different from each other. The creatures from the lower horizons of Oldowai II belong to the same stage of human evolution as Pithecanthropus IV and the Thelanthropus, whom most researchers regard as the earliest humans. The creatures from Oldowy I represent a more primitive form. They form a special group of hominins, which have already risen above the Australopithecus stage, but have not yet reached the Pithecanthropus stage. Morphological data allow us to consider them as being on the homipid line, going from Australopithecus Africanus and possibly leading to Pithecanthropus. To the same stage, following the stage of Australopithecus and the previous stage of Pithecanthropus, according to F. Tobias and G. Koenigswald, the ancient Javanese meganthrope should also be attributed. On the issue of the position of this group in the systematics, the opinions of the authors of the article differed. G. Koenigswald considers it as a special genus or at least a subgenus, F. Tobias - as a species of the genus Homo.

J. Robinson (1965) was much more emphatic. In his opinion, there are no grounds for singling out the Oldowan finds as a separate species (p. 121). Just like F. Tobias and G. Koenigswald, he distinguishes among them two morphologically distinct groups, one of which is formed by finds in Oldoway 1, and the other - finds in the lower horizons of Oldoway 11. The remains from Oldoway II show great proximity to the telanthropus, undoubtedly, in the opinion of J. Robinson, who is a man, and belong to the same stage as the latter, to the earliest stage in human evolution. They represent the earliest forms of Homo erectus. The remains from Oldowai I show closeness not to the Pithecanthropus, but to the African Australopithecus and represent a group of Australopithecus, only a few advanced in their development in comparison with the rest. In morphological terms, the similarity between Australopithecus africanus and the remains from Oldoway I, on the one hand, and Homo erectus and the remains from Oldoway II, on the other, is much greater than between the finds at Oldoway I and the finds at Oldoway II. Morphological data speak in favor of assigning Oldowai I and Oldoway II to two different genera (p. 123). However, at the same time, there are features that bring together the finds in Oldoway 1 with the finds in Oldoway II and distinguish them from other Australopithecus. The creatures from Oldowy 1 made tools, while all other Australopithecus used them only (p. 123). They were at the stage of transition from the use of natural tools, which was essential for Australopithecus, to the manufacture of tools, characteristic of man (p. 123).

Apart from the fact that the creatures from Oldowy 1 are closer in morphology to Australopithecus than to humans, the supporters of the isolation of Homo habilis could not get past. Thus, for example, J. Napier (1964a, 1964c) explicitly admits that the hands of the creatures from Oldowy 1 have a “strangely inhuman” character (1964b, p. 88) and, considered by themselves, cannot in any way suggest their involvement to the making of tools, even as primitive as those of the Old Wai (1964a, pp. 35–36), that the size of the brain and many other features of the skull and dentition of these creatures, in principle, do not go beyond the limits of variation possible in Australopithecus (1964b, pp. 89) As a result, in an effort to substantiate the isolation of Homo habilis, J. Napier emphasizes not so much the morphological differences between the creatures from Oldowy I and Australopithecus, but the undoubted fact that, unlike Australopithecus, they made tools, and not just used them. .

Thus, the materials currently available on the creatures from Oldowai I allow us to draw two main conclusions: first, that they made tools; secondly, that in their morphological appearance they were still australopithecines, although they had already advanced towards man. This is exactly what the later prehumans were supposed to be. The productive activity that had arisen was not yet able at this stage to substantially transform the morphological organization of the prehumans, but it was already bound to leave its imprint on it to some extent. In favor of the assumption that the basis of a certain difference in the morphological organization of the creatures from Oldowy 1 from the morphological appearances of both Australopithecus and Paranthropus is, first of all, the difference in the nature of their activity from the nature of the activity of the latter, is also evidenced by the fact that there are no sufficient grounds to attribute to Australopithecus and Paranthropus the ability make tools. The finds of tools at Sterkfontein and Makapansgat belong to layers later than those in which the remains of the plesianthropus and Australopithecus Prometheus were found (Brain, Lowe, Dart, 1955; Dart, 1955b; Robinson, Mason, 1958; Robinson, 1962).

The discovery of the creatures from Oldowai 1, together with other available data on Australopithecus, leads to the conclusion that early prehumans gave rise to two branches of development. The development of one went along the line of abandoning the herd way of life and belittling the role of prehuman labor and ended with the emergence of imaginary prehumans, the most typical representative of which is Gigantopithecus. The development of the second went along the path of transition from adaptive labor to transformative reflex labor and led to the emergence of later prehumans, representatives of which, apparently, were found in Oldowy 1.

The labor activity of later prehumans was not limited to reflex production. It represented, as indicated, the unity of two types of activity: the activity of making tools and the activity of appropriating the objects of needs with the help of manufactured tools. The activity of appropriating the objects of needs with the help of artificial tools, like the activity that preceded it of appropriating the objects of needs with the help of natural tools, was not a transformation of the environment, but an adaptation to it, was animal labor not only in form, but also in content. At the same time, it differed from its predecessor. This difference consisted in the fact that it was mediated by the activity of making tools, by production activity. The activity of appropriating objects of biological needs with the help of artificial tools was an adaptation to the external environment, but one that was mediated by production, the transformation of the external environment.

As a result of the emergence of activity in the manufacture of tools and the bifurcation of a single labor activity into production and adaptation to the external environment, which appropriates success, began to increasingly depend on the level of development of production activity. The improvement of production activity has become an important condition for the improvement of activity in adapting to the external environment, in satisfying biological instincts, and has become a necessary condition for the existence of later prehumans. But the development of productive activity differed significantly from the development of adaptive labor activity.

2. Features of the development of reflex production activity

The development of adaptive prehuman labor, like the development of any adaptive activity, proceeded under the influence of natural selection. In the process of defensive and hunting activity, in the process of intra-herd conflicts, individuals survived and left offspring, the most adapted in their physical organization to the use of tools, with the greatest combat and hunting experience.

The improvement of production activity under the influence of such selection could not occur, because the better adaptability to the performance of production operations in comparison with other members of the herd and greater production experience in themselves could not provide this particular individual with an advantage over them either in hunting and defensive activities, or in intra-herd activities. conflicts. The advantage in hunting, defense and fights was given by greater physical strength, dexterity, better adaptability to the use of tools, greater ability to operate with them, which could not always coincide with a greater ability to manufacture them. The use of more advanced tools could not give advantages, because the latter could not be the exclusive property of those who made them. More advanced techniques and production skills were quickly assimilated by other members of the herd; more advanced tools, made by individuals more adapted to this operation, could also be used by others less capable of productive activity.

Greater adaptability to production activities and greater production experience of some members of the herd did not give them advantages over other members of the herd, but the presence of these individuals in the herd gave advantages in adapting to the environment to all members of this herd compared to members of the herd, in which there were fewer such individuals and they had less production experience.

The great adaptability of the individual to appropriating reflex labor first of all gave him advantages over all other individuals, and only in the final analysis also gave certain advantages to the association of which he was a member over other associations. Adaptive pre-human labor, despite the fact that it was impossible outside of association, remained an essentially individual activity, an activity aimed at satisfying the instincts of this or that individual. The situation is different with industrial labor activity. The great adaptability of the individual to it, first of all, gave advantages to the association, of which he was a member, over other associations, and only thereby to himself. Production activity, from the very moment of its inception, was in its essence not an individual activity, but a collective one, an activity aimed at satisfying the needs of all members of the herd taken together, and only thereby to satisfy the individual needs of each of its members taken separately. The mediation of the activity of adapting to the environment that arose by production activity meant the mediation of the activity aimed at satisfying the biological instincts of each of the individuals, the activity aimed at satisfying the needs of all individuals included in the association, taken together.

Being by its nature not individual, but collective, production activity from the moment of its inception could not be improved under the influence of individual natural selection. But, having determined the exit of production activity from the sphere of individual natural selection, its collective nature gave rise to the possibility of a different form of selection. As indicated, the better adaptability of certain members of the herd to production activities, their large production experience gave significant advantages to all individuals belonging to a given association over all members of an association in which there were fewer such individuals and they had less adaptability to production activities. . This circumstance opened up the possibility of improving the ability to engage in productive activity, and thus productive activity itself, by selecting all the members of associations, which included more individuals who had better adaptation to productive activity and greater production experience, i.e., through a kind of group selection. We prefer to call this form of selection not herd selection, but group selection, because, although herds were selected in the process, they were not selected as a single whole, but only as a sum, an aggregate of individuals. The true objects of selection were not the herds as such, but the individuals who made them up. As a result of selection, there was an improvement in the ability of individuals to productive activity, but not the development of the herd. The herd of prehumans could not and did not evolve, because it was a zoological association, not an organism.

Group selection contributed to the improvement of production activity, but its role in the development of this activity differed from the role of individual natural selection in the improvement of adaptive reflex labor, in the improvement of any form of adaptive activity. This difference was due to another feature of production activity, which made it qualitatively different from adaptive activity. Production activity differed from any form of adaptive activity by its ability to develop independently of any form of selection, the ability for self-development, self-movement. To understand the essence of this difference, it is necessary to dwell at least briefly on the question of ways to improve adaptive activity.

Improvement of adaptive activity (behavior) can occur in two ways: by improving the ability of the animal to this activity, which is associated with the improvement of its morphological organization, and by improving only the activity itself without changing the organization of the animal. The first path involves the fixation and accumulation from generation to generation of changes in the morphological organization that make the animal more capable of adaptive activity, the second - the consolidation and accumulation from generation to generation of actions that ensure a more successful adaptation of the organism to the environment, fixation and accumulation of experience in adaptive activity.

In the animal world, both the fixation and accumulation of morphological traits that make the body more capable of adaptive activity, and the fixation and accumulation of adaptive actions are impossible without turning them into hereditary ones, without transferring them from generation to generation using the mechanism of heredity.

In lower animals, both ways of improving adaptive activity are combined. Examples of hereditarily fixed adaptive actions are instincts - complex chains of unconditioned reflexes. The development and change of instincts, as well as the change in the morphological organization of the animal, occur in the process of generational change under the influence of natural selection. It is quite clear that the hereditarily fixed activity of animals cannot but be marked by conservatism. The predominance of hereditarily predetermined activity in the behavior of an animal makes it less able to respond to rapid and unexpected changes in the external environment. The second way to improve adaptive activity, therefore, necessarily involves a decrease in the plasticity of the animal's behavior and, thereby, a narrowing of its adaptive capabilities.

An increase in the plasticity and flexibility of adaptive activity is impossible without its transformation into a hereditarily non-fixable one. Such activity is the behavior of higher mammals, which is a conditioned reflex activity, the activity of the cerebral cortex. “The development of hereditarily non-fixed actions,” wrote A.N. Severtsev (1949), “was progressive among mammals. Adjustment through behavior change during individual life is of great biological importance, because it allows higher mammals to quickly adapt to the changes introduced into their lives by other animals and humans" (p. 214; see also: 19456, p. 289-311).

In higher mammals, individually acquired actions, which by their mechanism are conditioned cortical reflexes, cannot become heritable, cannot be inherited. This does not mean at all that it is generally impossible for them to transfer the experience of activity from one individual to another. The emergence of higher nervous activity led to the development of such a form of transfer of experience as imitation, imitation. Experiments show that even in animals that are lower in the level of development of higher nervous activity than monkeys, the formation of conditioned reflexes based on imitation is possible (V. Kryazhev, 1955; L. Voronin, 1957). In monkeys, on the basis of imitation, a wide variety of reflexes and chains of reflexes can be formed. Monkeys imitate each other both in separate movements and in complex directed activity (Shtodin, 1947; Voitonis, 1949; L. Voronin, 1957; Harlow, 1959). Life in associations, in the presence of developed imitation, leads to the fact that the life experience of a monkey is made up not only of its individual experience, but also of the experience of comrades in the association. Through imitation, there was an exchange of labor experience among prehumans.

But if mammals developed new way transfer of experience in adaptive activity, they did not have a new way of fixing, consolidating and accumulating experience in adaptive activity from generation to generation. The natural selection of actions that best ensure adaptation to the environment, and the accumulation of these actions from generation to generation in higher mammals, was impossible, because these actions of theirs were neither hereditary nor capable of becoming hereditary. The adaptive activity of higher mammals, taken by itself, falls outside the scope of natural selection (Kremyansky, 1941). In higher mammals, it is impossible to consolidate and accumulate experience in adaptive activity from generation to generation, it is impossible to improve adaptive activity taken by itself. The improvement of their adaptive activity can be carried out in only one way - by improving the body's ability to such activity, by improving the morphological organization of the animal. Improvement of the adaptive activity of higher mammals is carried out by selecting animals whose morphological organization makes them more capable of performing adaptive actions. Natural selection improved the adaptive activity and behavior of higher mammals by improving their morphological organization, primarily the structure of the brain and motor apparatus. In this way, the improvement of pre-human adaptive labor also proceeded.

The situation began to change with the transition from the use of ready-made tools to the manufacture of means of labor. Each tool-making is, in principle, nothing more than a material, objective fixation, a consolidation of the activity involved in its production. With the beginning of the fixation of production experience in tools, each new generation, entering into life, received at its disposal the materialized experience of the production activity of previous generations, fixed in tools.

In the course of the activity of this generation, the experience of the previous generation was enriched and in this form passed on to the next, etc. The emergence of production activity meant, in essence, the emergence of a completely new method of recording, transferring and accumulating activity experience, a new way of improving activity, which does not have a place in the animal world. The development of production is a completely new form of movement, qualitatively different from the development of adaptive activity. If adaptive activity can develop and improve only under the determining action of natural selection, then the development and improvement of production activity is not determined by any form of selection. Production has a source of development in itself and therefore is capable of self-movement, self-development.

However, this does not mean that the development of productive activity in general could do without the action of any form of selection. Running a little ahead, we must say that right up to the emergence of man of the modern physical type, the improvement of production was inevitably hindered by the morphological organization of those beings who were engaged in the manufacture of tools. The emerging contradiction between the need for further development of production activity and morphological organization could be overcome only by improving this organization, and this could not happen without the action of selection. But the selection, under the influence of which the improvement of the organism's ability to productive activity took place, differed from that which determined the improvement of the ability to adaptive activity. Not only did it not determine the direction of development and improvement of production activity, the direction of change in morphological organization, but, on the contrary, the very direction of its action was determined by the development of production activity.

However, everything that has been said above fully applies only to production activity, which has already begun to free itself from the reflex, animal form. All this is applicable to reflex production activity only with certain reservations. The reflex form, in which the emerging production activity was clothed at first, hindered the manifestation of its ability for self-development, hindered its progress.

In the case when a tool of labor is the result of the act of making a tool of labor, the degree of its perfection is determined by the course of this act itself, the act of production. The course of an act of production can necessarily lead to the appearance of the desired result, i.e., an object with the desired properties, only if it is directed towards this result, will be determined by this result. In other words, the course of an act of production can necessarily lead to the desired result if this result exists at its beginning and determines its course. It is quite clear that the result of an act of production cannot exist in reality, materially, at its beginning. It can exist only in the head of the worker, only ideally. The ideal result of this process, the goal, which exists in the head of the worker before the start of production, determines the course of this process and, thereby, its material result. At the end of the production process, something begins to exist in reality, materially, that existed at its beginning only ideally, only in the head of the worker.

The goal - the ideal result of the production process - cannot be anything other than the result of the ideal production process. For the successful development and improvement of production activity, therefore, it is required that, in addition to the material processing of the object, its ideal processing takes place and that this ideal processing of the object overtakes its material processing and directs it. Production, by its very nature, presupposes and requires the existence of an active reflection of the world, such a reflection of the world that is able to anticipate and direct the process of transforming the world. Such a reflection of the world is human thinking, human consciousness and will. Acts of production can be successfully carried out and developed only if they are purposeful, conscious, volitional actions. Such purposeful, conscious, volitional acts of human labor are.

In late prehumans, as in early ones, and in other higher animals, the form of reflection of the world was higher nervous activity, which is an inseparable unity of reflection and behavior. Only stimuli of reflexes could be reflected in their brains. Images of phenomena that do not yet exist at the moment could not have arisen in their brains. They, like other animals, could not foresee the course and results of their actions, which were reflex acts. Hence the extremely sharp contradiction between the content and the form of the acts of tool-making that they had. Being acts of production, acts of transforming nature, and not adapting to it, they did not differ in content from acts of human labor and could not develop successfully only if there existed a process of ideal processing of objects that overtook and directed their material processing. But being in content acts of human labor, in their form they remained acts of animal labor and, like any reflex acts, could be determined only by external phenomena that existed at the beginning of these acts. This largely determined the random nature of the results of these acts, which could not be completely overcome without the emergence of a qualitatively different form of reflection of the world.

As has already been pointed out, the results of reflex acts aimed at making tools were initially purely random. The degree of suitability of stone fragments obtained by breaking to function as tools depended on the case. It is quite clear that the tools obtained in this way cannot be regarded as a genuine fixation of the result of the activity for their manufacture, as a genuine materialization of labor experience. The emerging reflex production activity had the ability for self-movement, self-development, but not so much in reality as in the possibility. Therefore, at the first steps of its development, it was largely improved under the decisive influence of group selection, which determined the improvement of the ability to perform production operations. But as productive activity developed, its capacity for self-movement began to turn more and more from a possibility into a reality, which inevitably caused a change in the role of group selection. The last of the factors that determined the development of reflex production activity began to increasingly turn into a factor whose direction of action was determined by the development of production activity itself, into a factor subordinate to production activity and fulfilling the "orders" of the latter.

The reflex form in which the original productive activity was clothed interfered with its development from the very beginning. However, a certain improvement in production activity was also possible in a reflex form. The level of development that productive activity was able to achieve before its release from the reflex form can be judged by the tools found together with the creatures from Oldowai I. They were unanimously attributed to the Oldowan culture (Leakey, 1961a, 1961b, 1963a; Clark, 1961 ; Leakey, Tobias, Napier, 1964 and others).

According to a number of researchers, the Oldowan stone industry in Africa is not the oldest known to science. She, in their opinion, grew out of the Kafuan industry that preceded her in the same territory. The Kafuan and Oldowan cultures essentially represent two consecutive stages in the development of one (Cole, 1954, pp. 1034–1035), which refers to the period preceding the Shellic archaeological era, the transition to which is associated with the appearance of the first stone tool, which has a developed, stable standardized form. , - hand ax (Childe, 1944, p. 41; Ravdonikas, 1939, I, p. 157–158; Efimenko, 1953, p. 107; Panichkina, 1953, p. 31–32; Artsikhovsky, 1955, p. 26 and etc.).

G. Mortiller (1903, p. 189), who gave the first clear scheme of the Paleolithic periodization, considered the hand ax as the first tool made by the human hand, and the shell as the first epoch in the development of the human stone industry, as the first epoch of the Old Stone Age. G. Mortiller considered the tools related to the era preceding the Schellian as the products of the activity not of a person, but of a creature theoretically constructed by him, intermediate between animals and man - Anthropothecus or Homosimius.

By the works of subsequent researchers, G. Mortiller's periodization was supplemented by the introduction of the pre-Shellic era. However, many scientists still do not recognize this era as independent. The first generally recognized archaeological epoch is still the Schellian one (Artsikhovsky, 1947, p. 8–9; 1955, p. 26; Efimenko, 1953, p. 109–110). Researchers who recognize the pre-Shellian as the first archaeological epoch, nowhere give it a detailed description, limiting themselves to the most general provisions. Their works emphasize that tools of the pre-Shellic era usually have a random, unstable, extremely indefinite shape and can hardly be distinguished from stone fragments that have undergone natural processing (Osborn, 1924, p. 103; Boriskovsky, 1957a, p. 40; Panichkina, 1953, p. 18).

Of all archaeologists, only L. Leakey (1953, pp. 57, 66–68) gives a more detailed description of the pre-Shellic era, who studied in detail the Oldowan culture related to it, but he also emphasizes that a characteristic feature of this industry is the absence of any there were no stable forms of stone tools (p. 68). Perhaps only the late Oldowan tools, directly preceding the early Shellic ones, have a somewhat more elaborate form.

The randomness, instability of the forms of pre-Shellian tools allows, in our opinion, with sufficient reason to consider them, with the possible exception of only the latest ones, immediately preceding the Shellic axes, the results of the activity of not people, even emerging ones, but late prehumans, products of reflex production activity, transformative prehuman labor. The lithic industry of late prehumans, which is, in all probability, almost the entire pre-Schelian industry, excluding, perhaps, only the latest, would best be called eolithic, and the epoch of its existence and development eolithic. The tools found at Oldowai I make it possible with a high degree of probability to assign to the Eolith all or almost all of the Oldowan and Kafuan industries.

Kafuan tools are very simple. They are water-rolled pebbles (or sometimes nodules of siliceous limestone or quartzite boulders), from which one or two flakes are separated to sharpen the end. Oldowan tools differ from Kafuan ones only in a slightly larger number of chips (Leakey, 1953, pp. 57, 67–68; Aliman, 1960, pp. 169–170, 236–238, 274, 314; Clark, 1961, and others. ). Pebbles and boulders, pointed with one or two or three chips, are found not only in Africa. They were also found in the pre-Shellic layers of Europe and Asia (Efimenko, 1953, p. 109-HO; Panichkina, 1953, p. 18–20; World History, 1955.1, p. 24–25; Movis, 1944, 3, 104–107) Together with tools of this kind, which are often referred to as coarse chopping tools, there are a large number of flakes of purely random shape.

The discovery, along with the creatures from Oldowai 1, of tools of the culture of the same name indicates that already in the Eolithic era, along with the technique of breaking stones, arose and developed new trick stone processing, which consists in beating off fragments from a stone nodule or pebbles and thereby breaking the nodule or pebbles. It can be assumed that initially this technique arose as a means of eliminating some defect that prevented the successful use of a piece of stone as a tool (Gorodtsov, 1930, p. 10; 1935, p. 69–70). Subsequently, this technique acquired an independent significance and laid the foundation for a new type of stone processing technique - the upholstery technique, which was also a beating technique. As tools, both fragments chipped from a pebble (boulder) and chipped pebbles (boulder) were used.

The emergence and development of the pounding-beating technique opened up the possibility of obtaining more advanced tools than the smashing technique could give. In addition to improving stone processing techniques, the development of the ability to choose the most suitable tools for making tools from a large number of stones of a wide variety of breeds and sizes also contributed to the progress of stone technology.

The tools obtained as a result of the pounding-beating technique, although they continued to have largely random outlines and did not have a developed form, nevertheless, to a certain extent, can already be characterized as a fixation of the activity in their manufacture, as a materialization of production experience. With the advent of the padding technique, production activity got the opportunity to show its ability for self-development, the opportunity to turn selection into a factor subordinate to it. However, despite all this, the progress of stone processing technology in the Eolithic era was extremely slow and was not so much qualitative as quantitative. It consisted not so much in improving the quality of the tools produced, but in increasing the percentage of the number of pieces of stone suitable for use as tools to the total number of stone fragments obtained as a result of processing.

The qualitative improvement of production activity was hampered by the reflex form in which the acts of production were clothed. The further industrial activity developed, the more the reflex form in which it was clothed hindered its self-development. For the time being, the new content could also develop in the old form, but sooner or later the latter had to become an insurmountable obstacle to the further development of the content. Production, developing, sooner or later had to reach such a limit beyond which its further development was completely impossible without the liberation of its acts from the reflex form, without their transformation from reflex into volitional, conscious, without the emergence of thinking and will.

But reflex activity was not the only obstacle to its development. Another no less, and perhaps even more important, obstacle was the unbridled zoological individualism that dominated the herd of later prehumans.

3. The conflict between industrial activity and zoological individualism in the herd of late prehumans

The behavior of late prehumans, like the behavior of early prehumans and other animals, was a reflex activity and, like any reflex activity of any animal, could only be directed to the satisfaction of biological needs, instincts. Therefore, relations within the herd of late prehumans could not differ in any significant way from those that took place in the herd of early proanthropes. Among the later prehumans, as well as among the early ones, there was an antagonism between the herd and the harem family. In the herd of late prehumans, as in the herd of the early ones, there was a constant breakdown and restructuring of the dominance system, bloody conflicts took place, often ending in death. In the herd of late prehumans, as in the herd of early ones, only zoological relations existed, zoological individualism dominated. The herd of late prehumans was a zoological association.

And at the same time, it differed from all zoological associations that preceded it, including from the herd of early prehumans. Being a zoological association, it was at the same time an association of beings who not only adapted to the environment, but also produced, beings in which adaptation to the external environment was mediated by production. And this circumstance made zoological individualism in the herd of later prehumans a phenomenon that prevented the improvement of their adaptation to the external environment and thus endangered their existence.

A certain contradiction between zoological individualism and the need to adapt to the environment existed, as noted in Chapter V, already in the herd of early prehumans. The endless conflicts that took place in it could and did endanger the existence of the herd and thus its members. But they did not interfere directly with the implementation and improvement of adaptive pre-human labor, the implementation and improvement of activities to adapt to the external environment.

During the repulsion of an attack from outside and during the hunt, all conflicts within the herd ceased and it acted as a single whole. The unity of actions of all members of the herd during the defense and hunting was determined by the coincidence of their desire to satisfy their instincts. An attack from outside threatened all members of the herd, and therefore they all sought to repel it. The coincidence of the aspirations of all members of the herd to satisfy the food instinct underlay the unity of their actions at the time of the hunt. Until the animal was killed, the aspirations of all members of the herd coincided. The clash of their aspirations to satisfy the food instinct began after the successful completion of the hunt.

Conflicts and clashes in the herd of early prehumans not only did not directly interfere with the flow of adaptive prehuman labor, but even in a certain respect contributed to its improvement. As a rule, the winners of intra-herd conflicts were individuals who, in terms of their physical organization, were to a greater extent than the rest capable of using sticks, stones and other tools, who had the greatest experience in their use, who operated them most deftly and skillfully. As a result of skirmishes, there was a selection of individuals most adapted to reflex appropriating labor. The selection that occurred as a result of intra-herd conflicts coincided with the direction of the selection that adapted the early prehumans to the external environment.

Endless conflicts within the herd of early prehumans could and did interfere with their activities of adapting to the environment only indirectly - by reducing the size of the herd to a level that made it little or no capable of defense and attack. In the herd of late prehumans, endless conflicts began to interfere with adaptation to the environment not only in this way, but also in another way.

As already indicated, the adaptation of later prehumans to the external environment was mediated by production. The success of their activity in adapting to the external environment directly depended on the level of development of the activity in the manufacture of tools, on its success. Everything that upset productive activity and hindered its development upset and prevented the later prehumans from adapting to the environment. And the endless conflicts in the herd of later prehumans directly upset productive activity, directly hindered its improvement.

Skirmishes and clashes in the herd of late prehumans, as in the herd of early ones, ceased for the duration of defense from enemies and hunting. These periods were sharply delineated in time. The period of defense opened with an attack from outside and ended with the destruction or flight of the enemy. The hunting period began with the discovery of an animal that could be prey, and ended either with the killing of this animal, or the refusal to pursue it further if it turned out to be hopeless. During these sharply defined periods, characterized by the unity of action of the members of the herd and the cessation of conflicts within it, the implementation of productive activity was, of course, impossible. It could only be carried out during periods of time that remained free from hunting and defense, that is, during periods during which conflicts occurred within the herd.

Production activity could not by itself bring about such a unity of action as hunting and defense. The basis of the unity of the actions of animals is, first of all, the coincidence of their aspirations to satisfy their instincts.

Production activity could not cause such a coincidence of aspirations, because, unlike hunting and defensive activity, it was not directed directly to the satisfaction of instincts. It contributed to the satisfaction of instincts only indirectly, providing the later prehumans with more advanced tools for defense and hunting. To this it must be added that, being collective in nature, productive activity at the same time did not necessarily require that all members of the herd, without exception, be engaged in it at the same time. If defense and hunting could be successful only if all or almost all members of the herd took part in them, then production activities could be completed successfully even if only a certain number of members of the association took part in it at the moment.

As a result of all this, the beginning of production activity could not be as sharply and directly marked as the beginning of periods of defense and hunting, and could not entail the cessation of intra-herd conflicts. Production activity could not be strictly localized in time and form its own period, free from any other activity. Intra-herd conflicts, which continued even during the course of production activity, inevitably had to disrupt its course, upset it, interfere with the transfer of labor experience, and impede its further improvement.

Intra-herd conflicts prevented successful development production activities and the fact that as a result of them the individuals who were most adapted to it and who had the greatest production experience could and did die. If the qualities that made the individual more adapted to the use of tools coincided with those that gave him the opportunity to emerge victorious from internecine skirmishes, then the same cannot be said about the qualities that made the individual more capable of productive activity. Better adaptability to the performance of production operations, greater production experience in themselves did not give advantages in fights and skirmishes.

Thus, the conflicts that existed in the herd of late prehumans and were a manifestation of zoological individualism directly upset production activity and prevented its improvement. In this way they hindered its adaptation to the environment even when they did not lead to any significant reduction in the size of the herd, and did not even lead to a decrease in the size of the herd at all. Even the level of severity of conflicts, which would not in the least prevent the herd of early prehumans from successfully defending and hunting, would not affect their activity in adapting to the environment in any way, was dangerous for later prehumans, because it disrupted their production activities and interfered with its development. not to mention the level of intensity of conflict that made the herd of early prehumans less capable of defense and attack.

The herd of monkeys, which was the basis on which the herd of early prehumans arose, and thus the herd of later prehumans, was brought to life by the need to adapt to the external environment, primarily the need to satisfy such a biological instinct as defensive. Called to life by the need to adapt to the external environment, the herd of monkeys fully satisfied this need. The herd of early prehumans, which arose from a herd of monkeys, was also called upon to satisfy the need for adaptation to the external environment. Only in the herd could such a form of adaptive activity as appropriating reflex labor be successfully carried out, could the satisfaction of two such important biological instincts as food and defense be successfully ensured. Called to life by the need to adapt to the environment, the herd of early prehumans as a whole contributed to the satisfaction of this need, but not completely. The herd of early prehumans, like the ape herd that preceded it, was a conglomeration of harem families and bachelors. This circumstance, in conditions when appropriating animal labor became the main form of adaptation to the external environment, inevitably turned into a source of bloody conflicts that could lead and in certain cases led to the disintegration of the herd and the death of prehumans.

The transition from early to late prehumans was associated with the emergence of a completely new form of activity - production, qualitatively different from adaptive. This new form of activity mediated the adaptation of later prehumans to the environment. But if the relation of later prehumans to nature was of a different character than the attitude of early prehumans towards it, then their relation to each other did not differ in any essential way from the relation of the latter to each other. The herd of late prehumans did not differ in its structure from the herd of early prehumans and the herd of monkeys. It was also a conglomeration of harem families and bachelors.

The herd, which arose from the need to adapt to the external environment, consisting of harem families and bachelors, no longer fully corresponded to such a form of activity as animal appropriating labor, despite the fact that it was an adaptive activity, an activity, although it could not be carried out outside the association, but nevertheless by its very nature individual. Moreover, it could not meet the needs of the functioning and development of such a qualitatively different from the adaptive form of activity as production, which was collective in its very essence. The undivided dominance of zoological individualism in the herd of later prehumans was in sharp contradiction to the production activity that was collective in nature, undermined and upset it, hindered and hindered its development. Thus, it undermined and upset the adaptation of later prehumans to the environment, hindered its improvement.

Production activity, collective in nature, could not successfully develop in the shell of a zoological adaptive association that arose from the need to satisfy the biological instincts, individual in their essence. The further industrial activity developed, the more the zoological, adaptive nature of the association in which it was carried out became a brake on its development, the less this association satisfied the needs of production, and thus the needs of adaptation to the environment. Sooner or later, the development of production activity was bound to reach such a limit beyond which its further improvement in the shell of a zoological association, in an atmosphere of undivided domination of zoological individualism, became absolutely impossible. From that moment on, the restriction of zoological individualism, the restructuring of the association in which production activity was carried out, the transformation of the latter from a biological, adaptive association into a production, economic association, became an urgent vital necessity, an urgent need.

Since the basis and source of most conflicts in the association of late prehumans, as in the association of early prehumans that preceded it, was the antagonism between the herd and the harem family, this essentially production necessity, economic but essentially a need, manifested itself primarily in the form of need, necessity overcoming the antagonism between the herd and the harem family Production, developing at a certain stage of its evolution, thus inevitably required the resolution of the antagonism between the harem family and the herd, and its resolution in one strictly defined way - by destroying harem families, by dissolving them in the herd. No other way of resolving the antagonism between harems and the herd could meet the needs of the development of productive activities. The disintegration of the herd into independent harem families, which led to the degradation of even adaptive labor, would inevitably put an end not only to development, but also to the very existence of productive activity. Only a herd without harem families could be an association in which production activities would be able to further develop.

The elimination of harems, their dissolution in the herd was impossible without a strong suppression of the sexual instinct of all males that were part of the herd. Generated by the development of productive activity, the urgent need for a radical restructuring of the association in which it was carried out, in limiting zoological individualism, first of all manifested itself in the form of a need to curb such a biological instinct as sexual.

The objective need that arose in the association of late prehumans for the restructuring of this association, for the restriction of zoological individualism, was qualitatively different from all the other needs that existed in it. All other needs that existed in the herd of later prehumans were biological needs, zoological instincts that were part of this association of creatures. The needs that arose and took shape in the process of adaptation to the environment of previous generations could exist and existed only as the needs of individual specific individuals, as individual needs. In contrast to them, the need to limit zoological individualism, which arose and took shape in the process of development of production activity, was not a biological need, but a production, i.e., economic one. Having as its basis production activity collective in nature, this need was not individual, but collective. It existed as a need of all the members of the association, taken together, as a social, public need.

There was a contradiction between industrial, social needs and biological, individual needs. Satisfaction of the social need demanded and implied the limitation of such an important biological need as the sexual one, demanded and implied the curbing of the sexual instinct. But this contradiction was not and could not be absolute. Between the social, production needs and biological, individual, there was not only a contradiction, but also a coincidence. In later prehumans, as has been repeatedly noted, activity directly aimed at satisfying biological needs was mediated by production. Everything that disrupted productive activity hindered adaptive activity, hindered the satisfaction of biological needs.

The most important factor that upset the productive activity of later prehumans was the unrestricted manifestation of the sexual instinct. Increasingly disrupting productive activity, the unbridled desire to satisfy the sexual instinct increasingly disrupted adaptive activity, more and more prevented the satisfaction of such important instincts as food and defense, more and more to a greater extent endangered the existence of later prehumans, and thereby the satisfaction of the sexual instinct itself. Inevitably, therefore, at a certain stage, the satisfaction of the production, social need to curb the sexual instinct became a necessary condition for the satisfaction of all individual, biological needs, not excluding sexual, a necessary condition for the existence of later prehumans. social, industrial needs.

The satisfaction of this need consisted, as was pointed out, primarily in the suppression of the sexual instinct. In order to suppress such a stimulus for the behavior of each of the later prehumans as the sexual instinct, the social production need itself had to become a factor in the behavior of each of them, a stimulus for their individual behavior, and more powerful than biological needs.

The behavior of later prehumans was a higher nervous, reflex activity and could be determined and was determined primarily by two kinds of factors: instincts and external stimuli that fell on the cerebral cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. It was primarily the result of the interaction of the influence of the subcortical unconditioned centers and the influence of external stimuli. A certain role in determining the behavior of later prehumans, as well as the behavior of early prehumans and monkeys, was played by the research trend, which had as its basis a purely cortical dominant.

The social, production need could not, of course, become a subcortical tendency, could not find a center in the subcortex. She could not become pure-cork either. It could influence the behavior of later prehumans only by manifesting itself in the form of various kinds of external phenomena. Manifesting itself, like any necessity, in the form of accidents, the production, social need to curb the sexual instinct could and did lead to the suppression of this instinct, could and did force the members of the herd to suppress each other's sexual instincts. But such a suppression, being external, could not be either firm or lasting in any way. In order for this suppression to become strong and lasting, it was necessary to transform it from external to internal. It was necessary that the need for production, which was the need of all individuals taken together, but not one of them taken separately, while continuing to remain social, collective, should at the same time become the internal need of each of the members of the herd, become along with zoological instincts their individual need, more important than biological needs.

However, as long as the behavior of later prehumans was a reflex activity, this was impossible. In later prehumans, as in other higher animals, the way known in the animal world for the lasting suppression of the sexual instinct, which consisted in the transformation of a zoological association into a collective biological organism, and most of its members into asexual beings, was impossible.

But production, having made the need for a firm and permanent suppression of the sexual instinct urgent, opened the way for the transformation of this social, production need into an individual one. This road was opened by the beginning liberation of productive activity from the reflex form.

4. The beginning of the liberation of production from the reflex form and the emergence of the primitive human herd

It can be assumed with a high degree of probability that the need to curb zoological individualism, to transform a zoological association into a production association, matured approximately at the same time when the liberation of production activity from reflex form, the emergence of thinking and will became an urgent need.

Unlike the higher nervous activity of animals, which represents the unity of behavior and reflection and is in essence a reflection of individual phenomena, human thinking is in its essence a reflection of the general. Only a reflection of the general, essence can be an active reflection, only a reflection of the general can make it possible to look into the future, to foresee the course of objective processes and one's own actions, and, therefore, direct one's activity to transform the world.

The higher nervous activity of animals, being in its essence a reflection of the individual, at the same time conceals in itself the possibility of the emergence of thinking. This possibility lies in the appearance in higher animals of a “grouped representation of the phenomena of the external world” (“Pavlovian Wednesday”, 1949, III; p. 8; see also p. 135, 152, 193, 284, 325, 357, 367, 382, 396, 414), the appearance of peculiar very shallow and fragile images of the general, which could be called "presumptions", in the appearance of the beginnings of induction and deduction, generalization and abstraction (Yu. Semenov, 19586, pp. 101–108). At the third stage In the development of the higher nervous activity of animals, "concepts" reach their highest development and become necessary. At the third stage of the evolution of the higher nervous activity of animals, the possibility of the emergence of human conceptual thinking takes shape (ibid., 19586, pp. 108–110).

Human concepts can exist only in a material linguistic shell. Human thinking could not have arisen without the advent of language. The reflex production activity, the development of which made the transition to thinking imperative, created all the necessary prerequisites for the emergence of language.

A necessary condition not only for improvement, but for the existence in general of any production activity, including reflex activity, is the exchange of production experience and the coordination of the actions of producing beings. Acts of production prior to the emergence of thinking were by their mechanism individually acquired conditioned cortical reflexes and chains of such reflexes. Among the later prehumans, as well as among the early ones, the main means of transferring labor experience was imitation, imitation. But the skills and techniques of productive activity were so complex compared with the techniques and skills of using tools that imitation could not satisfy the ever-increasing need for the exchange of industrial experience. It could no longer satisfy the growing need for coordination of actions. It was necessary to create a new means of communication - a spoken language. And he started to emerge. The basis on which the sound language began to form was the sound signaling, which is quite diverse in monkeys (Garner, 1899; Tikh, 1947, II–III; Bunak, 19516, 1951c; Spirkin, 1957, 1960) and, undoubtedly, in a much more developed form that existed among prehumans.

With the advent of words, “concepts” began to turn into concepts, with the beginning of the formation of language, human thinking and human will began to take shape.

“First, labor, and then, along with it, articulate speech were the two most important stimuli, under the influence of which the brain of a monkey gradually turned into a human brain,” wrote F. Engels (Soch., vol. 20, p. 490).

With the beginning of the formation of language, thinking and will, the liberation of production and all activity in general from the reflex, animal form began, its transformation into purposeful, conscious, volitional activity, the formation of human labor began both in content and in form, the formation of man began. With the beginning of the liberation of production from the reflex form, the later prehumans turned into people, but people not yet ready, people in the process of being formed.

“An animal,” wrote K. Marx (1956, p. 565), “disclosing the difference between animal behavior and human behavior, is directly identical with its life activity. It does not distinguish itself from its life activity. It is this life activity. Man, on the other hand, makes his own life activity the object of his will and his consciousness. His life activity is conscious. It is not a certainty with which it directly merges into one. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. "The process of the formation of consciousness and will was the process of transforming life activity from reflex to conscious, volitional, into an object of consciousness and will, turning it from determined by instincts and external stimuli into managed and controlled by will and consciousness. The ability to control one’s actions, one’s behavior, one’s life activity arose, however, in the most rudimentary form of the formation of will and consciousness. reality.

The transformation of this possibility into reality, as well as the liberation of productive activity from the reflex form, began under the influence of group selection, already mentioned above, subordinated to production and ensuring the satisfaction of the needs of production. Became pressing need in the limitation of zoological individualism, appearing in the form of group herd selection that replaced the group, more and more forced the emerging people to curb each other's sexual instincts, more and more forced them to destroy already existing harems and prevent the formation of new ones, more and more degree, drove into the heads of emerging people the practical consciousness manifested in actions that the desire of any male to acquire a harem is fraught with danger to all other members of the herd, threatens the death of all of them, that this danger can only be avoided by curbing such a desire, by suppressing it with the forces of all the rest of the team members. This consciousness of danger was not theoretical, but practical. It arose, manifesting itself in actions aimed at suppressing dangerous aspirations, and only manifesting itself in these actions, it was formed.

It is difficult to say anything specific about how this process proceeded. But one thing is certain: due to the development of production activity, the objective need to resolve the conflict between the herd and the harem family by dissolving harems in the herd was initially expressed in the form of the desire of each member of the association to suppress the action of any other male, which he felt as dangerous to him, aimed at acquiring a harem . Initially, each of the members of the association, acting together with all the others, curbed the instincts of each of the other members of the association, taken separately. Such a curbing of biological instincts was of an external nature and, perhaps, was even before the beginning of the transformation of life activity into an object of will and consciousness. With the beginning of this process, with the emergence in each of the emerging people of the potential ability to regulate and control their activities, the external suppression of instincts began to increasingly turn into an internal, external curbing of biological needs, began to be increasingly supplemented by internal self-restraint.

In the process of curbing by all the members of the association taken together all the members of the association taken separately, each of its members began to develop the ability to curb himself, to force himself to refrain from those actions that were suppressed by the association. Curbing, together with all the other members of the collective, taken together, all the other members of the collective, taken separately, each member of the collective learned to curb himself, to suppress his instincts in accordance with the requirements of the collective, in which the production, economic necessity found its expression in limiting zoological individualism. .

Thus, the will of each of the members of the collective, its practical consciousness, manifested in actions, was formed as an expression of a collective production need that acts as a collective and in reality is a collective production need, as a part of the social, collective will, as a form of existence of social consciousness. Social consciousness, the consciousness of the collective, as well as the emerging individual consciousness, at the first stages of its development was not of a theoretical nature, but of a purely practical one. It was a production, economic need, the will of the collective, the public will, the emerging morality, having its content. The first requirement of the collective to the individual was the requirement not to allow the formation of harems within the herd, the first moral norm was the prohibition to acquire harems, the harem prohibition. (See note).

The objective production, collective need to resolve the conflict between the harem family and the herd by dissolving harems in the herd, manifesting itself in the activities of emerging people, was reflected and consolidated in the form of the collective's demands for its members to refrain from attempts to form harems, requirements that were at the same time the requirements of individuals to themselves. yourself. The more this need was fixed in the requirements of the collective to its members and the members of the collective to themselves, the more it became the content of the public will, and thus it was a part of the individual will of the members of the collective, the more it, remaining social, became internal. the need of each of the individuals, the internal stimulus of their behavior, the more the external suppression of the sexual instinct was supplemented by internal suppression, self-suppression, the more prolonged and durable this curbing became.

The objective collective need to eliminate the main source of conflicts within the herd - the antagonism between the harem family and the herd, became the content of the collective and thus the individual will, reflected in the requirements of the collective will to prevent the formation of harems, entrenched in the form of a harem ban, led to the complete and final dissolution of harem families in the herd. The result was the final formation of the primitive human herd, the beginning of the formation of which was laid by the beginning of the liberation of production from the reflex, animal form.

The primitive human herd that arose was undoubtedly more united and cohesive than the herd of later pre-humans that preceded it, much more in line with the needs of the development of productive activity. The dissolution of harem families in the herd, first of all, to a large extent contributed to the mitigation of conflicts within the team. Of no small importance was the fact that with the elimination of harem families, the partitions that existed between the members of the herd collapsed. From a conglomerate of a harem family and bachelors, the herd has turned into a single amorphous collective. With the destruction of such a form of biological organization of sex relations as the harem, sexual relations within the herd took on an unorganized, disordered character. The rise of the primitive human herd was the rise of promiscuity. Thus, the first clearly formulated by I. Ya. Bachofen (Bachofen, 1861, S. XVIII–XIX) and developed by L. Morgan (1934a, p. 33, 234) and F. Engels (Soch., t. .21, p.37 ff.) the position of promiscuity as the initial and universal stage in the development of human sexual relations, which is currently shared by all Soviet scientists.

But if the proposition about promiscuity as the initial stage in the development of human family and marriage relations is correct, then this, in our opinion, cannot be fully said about the view of promiscuity only as a relic of the animal state, the view that most scientists currently adhere to (Zolotarev , 19406, 1964, p. 48; "World History", 1955, I, p. 33; Nesturkh, 1958, p. 231-232; Zybkovets, 1959, p. 227-228, etc.). In associations of people's ancestors (anthropoids and prehominids) there were no promiscuity relations.The emergence of promiscuity was the result of the collapse of the animal family, which broke up because, as F. Engels quite correctly pointed out (Soch., v.21, p.39), it was incompatible with human society "Promiscuity, therefore, is a negation of the form of sex relations that was inherent in the animal ancestors of man. One cannot agree with the view of the era of promiscuity as a period of unrestricted, unrestrained manifestations of instincts in general, the sexual instinct in particular (Zolotarev, 1940a, p. 163–164; Efimenko, 1953, pp. 214, 224,227).

The emergence of promiscuity is the result of the manifestation in the activities of people of a production, collective need to resolve the antagonism between the herd and the harem family, which is reflected and consolidated in the form of a harem prohibition. The emergence of the harem prohibition, which has a production, collective need for its content, was the first blow to zoological individualism in general, and to the system of domination in particular. The requirement of the collective to refrain from trying to acquire a harem was to be obeyed by all males, regardless of their physical strength, size, or ability to use weapons. Not one of them could disregard this requirement, for the whole herd as a whole stood guard over this first moral norm.

The promiscuous primitive human herd was qualitatively different from all associations that preceded it. All these associations arose from the need to adapt to the environment, they were adaptive, biological associations. The primitive human herd was called to life by the need to develop productive activity. Production activity, which originated in the depths of a biological, adaptive association, developing, inevitably came into conflict with the zoological relations that existed in it, with the zoological individualism that dominated it, inevitably at a certain stage demanded the emergence of new relations between individuals that are different from biological ones, the curbing of zoological individualism, the emergence of such an association in which it would receive the possibility of further development. And such a union was the primitive human herd.

The primitive human herd arose as an association not adaptive, biological, but production, economic.

Unlike all associations that preceded it, the primitive human herd had its own needs, which were not limited to the biological needs of its members. These needs were production needs. The needs of production could not but be the needs production association. Having its own needs, not reducible to the needs of its constituent members, the primitive human herd had its own being, not reducible to the being of its members, being in its essence productive, economic. Thus, it was not just an association of individuals, but a collective organism with the ability to change and develop.

But this collective organism that arose from a zoological association was qualitatively different from collective organisms, superorganisms of the type of "societies" of insects. "Societies" of insects and the like are brought into being by the need to adapt a given species of animal to the external environment. They are collective adaptive biological organisms. The primitive human herd was an organism of a completely different nature - a production, economic, social organism, or, more precisely, an organism becoming social, a social organism being formed.

The difference between the collective social organism and the collective biological organism is sharply manifested in the difference between the relation of the social organism and the members that form it, and the relation of the superorganism and the individuals that compose it. The main feature of a biological collective organism is the biological specialization of its members, their transformation into organs or parts of organs of a superorganism. Production, having armed the individual with artificial tools capable of improvement, making it possible and necessary for the individual to develop the ability to control and regulate his life activity and thereby the ability to curb his instincts in accordance with the requirements of the collective, made possible and necessary the emergence of such a collective organism in which there is no biological specialization. its constituent individuals, the emergence of a collective organism consisting of biologically equivalent individuals. If in a collective biological organism the instincts of its constituent individuals are suppressed by their abolition, then in a social organism it is by curbing these biological stimuli of behavior with new stimuli qualitatively different from them. These new factors of behavior are the needs of the social organism that are productive in nature.

The production needs of the collective organism, such as the primitive human herd was, cannot be reduced to the needs of its constituent members. And at the same time, they cannot be satisfied without their transformation into the needs of the members of the collective, into incentives for the behavior of the members of the collective, and more powerful than biological needs. The behavior of the members of the primitive human herd from the very beginning of its formation was determined not only by biological instincts, but also by the social and economic needs that curbed and suppressed them. The primitive human herd from the very beginning was not a purely biological association. It was an emerging social organism. Accordingly, its members from the very beginning were no longer purely biological beings. They were emerging social beings, emerging human beings.

In the behavior of emerging people, in their relationship to each other, not only biological instincts were manifested, but also the social, production necessity that curbed them.

From the very beginning, zoological individualism no longer reigned supreme in the relations between developing people, they were no longer purely zoological. From the very beginning, relations between emerging people were to a certain extent already social, industrial. The beginning of the formation of the primitive human herd was the beginning of the formation industrial relations, social being and thus the beginning of the formation of production in the full sense of the word.

Production is the unity of productive forces and production relations. Prior to the beginning of the formation of the primitive human herd, which, as indicated, coincided with the beginning of the liberation of production activity from the reflex form, production relations as such did not exist. Therefore, production in the full sense of the word before the beginning of the liberation of labor from the reflex form, which was at the same time the beginning of the formation of the primitive human herd, is out of the question. We can only talk about production activities. The formation of production in the full sense of the word began from the moment when production activity began to free itself from the double animal form in which it was clothed at its inception - from the reflex form and from the shell of the zoological association.

The beginning of the process of formation of production was the beginning of the process of formation of man and society. The process of the formation of human society is the process of the formation of social, primarily production relations, the formation of social being and social consciousness, the process of the formation of man as a social being. The formation of production relations, social life is one side of the process of formation of production, the other side of which is the formation of productive forces. Therefore, it is impossible to understand the process of formation of social being without considering the process of formation of productive forces.

The productive forces, as is well known, are an inseparable unity of two elements, one of which is the instruments of production, and the other is the people who operate these instruments. The formation of the productive forces is therefore an inseparable unity of the process of the formation of man as a productive force, primarily the process of the formation of the morphological organization of man and the process of the development of tools.

The process of the formation of productive forces is the basis of the process of formation of production forces and, therefore, of all public relations. Therefore, it is natural to begin the analysis of the process of the formation of human society with a consideration of how the process of development of tools of labor proceeded during the formation of society and how the formation of man as a productive force, the formation of the physical type of man.

It is also necessary to begin consideration of the formation of human society with an analysis of the formation of productive forces, because this process, in contrast to the process of formation of social relations, social being and social consciousness, has direct data that make it possible to form a more or less complete picture of how it leaked. To trace the process of development of the means of labor in the period of the formation of society, finds of tools related to this era allow. They also make it possible to indirectly judge the level of human development as a productive force. Direct evidence that allows us to imagine how the process of the formation of man as a productive force, the process of the formation of the physical type of a person, is the bone remains of forming people.

Notes:

Johanson D C. Ethiopia Yields First "Family" of Early Man // national geographic 1976 Vol 150 No. 6: Paieb M et al Geological and Palaeontological Background of Hadar Hominid Site, Afar. Ethiopia//Nature. 1976 Vol. 260. No. 5549

Recently, some scientists have come forward with the assertion that the Australopithecus had already begun to make tools (Oakley, 1957a; Washburn, 1959, 1960; S Semenov, 1958). But this statement of theirs not only does not diverge from the propositions put forward above, as it seems at first glance, but, on the contrary, coincides with them in essence. In order to correctly understand their statements, it is necessary to take into account, firstly, that all of them, speaking of Australopithecus, do not mean a group consisting of Australopithecus African, Australopithecus Prometheus and Transvaal plesianthropus, but use this term in the same sense in which we use the term "prehumans", secondly, that they attribute the ability to make tools, as a rule , not all Australopithecus, understood in the broadest sense of the word, but only the latest of them, that is, essentially those of them that we single out under the name of late prehumans.

For more details on this issue, see Section 2 of Chapter IV of this work, as well as our article "Material and Ideal in the Higher Nervous Activity of Animals" (1958b).

Other researchers believe that no Kafuan culture exists, that the so-called "Kafuan" tools are of natural origin (Leakey, 1960a).

We do not dwell on the issue of the emergence and development of language and thinking in more detail, because this would divert us from the main problem - the formation of human society. Those wishing to familiarize themselves with the proposed solutions to this issue are referred to the works of L.S. Vygotsky. (1934), S.M. Dobrogaeva (1945. 1946, 1947), L.O. Reznikova (1940), V.V. Bupak (1951b, 1951c). A.G. Spirkina (1957. 1960). M.F. Protaseni (1959, 1961). L. L. Leontieva (1963), M. S. Voyno (1964) and others




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