СТАДИЙ ТЕОРИЯ

Stages, Theory of

The conception of US sociologist Walt Rostow set out in his book The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). According to this conception history is divided into five stages: (1) "traditional society", which includes all societies not short of the capitalist; it is marked by a low productivity of labour and the predominance of agriculture; (2) "transitional society", which coincides with the transition to pre-monopoly capitalism; (3) "stage of take-off", marked by industrial revolutions and the beginning of industrialisation; (4) "stage of maturity" (completion of industrialisation and emergence of industrially developed countries); (5) "stage of high mass consumption", claimed to be attained as yet only in the United States.

For relations of production, the real basis of historical development, Theory of Stages substitutes an eclectical interaction of a variety of factors—technical, economic, psychological, political, cultural, historical, and the like. Taking the share of capital in the national income as the basis for dividing society into stages, Rostow arbitrarily classifies different socio-economic formations under the head of "traditional society" and thereby ignores the qualitative differences between them. Theory of Stages endeavours to identify phenomena which are qualitatively different in social substance by placing them under the common head of "industrial society" (e.g., the attempts to identify socialist and capitalist industrialisation).

Eager to vindicate colonialism and US capitalism, Theory of Stages repudiates the need for socialist revolutions and maintains that the whole world is moving towards an "integrated industrial society" as exemplified by the United States, and thereby attempts to goad the peoples recently liberated from the colonial yoke on to the capitalist path of development. Rostow's conception claims to be a materialist interpretation of society and endeavours to capitalise on its outward resemblance to Marxism (acknowledgement of technical and economic factors, and the like). Theory of Stages is aimed against the Marxist teaching of socio-economic formations and has been elevated to the rank of an official political doctrine in some capitalist countries.

Philosophically, it is based on subjective idealism and voluntarism. While eclectically recognising the interaction of a variety of factors, it ultimately accentuates the subjective ones, such as "free choice" of historical path, "free solution", and the like.

Стадиальная теория

Теория стадий, лингвистическая гипотеза, предполагающая определённую последовательность смены языковых типов. Возникла под влиянием эволюционистских идей. С. т. в её разновидностях разрабатывалась В. Гумбольдтом, А. Шлейхером, А. Тромбетти, Н. Я. Марром, И. И. Мещаниновым и др. В советском языкознании она характеризовалась поисками стимулирующего начала в закономерностях развития мышления. Неудовлетворительность известных стадиальных построений обусловливалась ограниченностью привлекавшейся языковой базы и неразработанностью методики историко-типологического исследования. Отсюда ошибки, характеризовавшие как формально-структурное, так и содержательно-ориентированное направления С. т.