关键词: 社会形态, 五形态说, 三形态说, 历史发展规律, 自然历史过程

Abstract: In order to grasp Marxs theory of social formation, we need to use a concrete historical way of thinking, the logic behind which is “rising from abstraction to concreteness” of “the society in generalthe social formationthe capitalist society”. When analyzing the capitalist society, Marx clearly distinguishes the material elements and social forms of the production process, reveals the fetishistic nature of capital, and highlights the historical temporalities of capital. The law of historical development is not a law external to human beings, but a law that can only exist in human activities. There is no fundamental conflict between the objectivity of the law of historical development and the subjectivity of human beings. To investigate the “naturalness” of social development, we need to make clear which is the “eternal inevitability” that runs throughout the development of human society and which is the “temporary inevitability” in some or a certain stage of historical development. The successive evolution of the theory of“five types of social formations” or “three types of social formations” is not a law of historical development revealed by Marx, but the concrete manifestation of it.

Key words: social formation, theory of five types of social formations, theory of three types of social formations, law of historical development, natural historical process