Development of the society

AUGUSTE COMTE

 Comte considered his law of three stages based upon belief in social evolution to the most important. He argues that the universal law (law of three stages) can be the feature of society also. According to him, every society passes through three stages and this is based on the development of the human mind. These three stages are as follows:

(i) Theological Stage: It is also called the fictitious stage. This stage, dominated by priests and the military, is the period in which man seeks the essential nature of all beings, first and final causes, origin, and purposes of all effects, and the overriding belief that all things are caused by supernatural beings.

The theological stage went through the three phases of Fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism.

(ii) Metaphysical or Abstract Stage: It is a modification of the theological stage. This stage is dominated by churchmen and lawyers, a stage in which mind presupposes abstract forces, veritable entities and personified abstractions capable of producing all phenomena. "It forms a link and is mongrel and transitional. The metaphysical stage started about 1300 A.D and was short-lived.

(iii) Positive or Scientific Stage: The dawn of the 19th century marked the beginning of the positive stage in which observation predominated over imagination and all theoretical concepts become positive. In this final stage, dominated by industrial administrators and scientists and scientists, the nature of the human mind has given up its childish and vain search for Absolute nations, origins, and destinations of the universe and its causes but seeks to establish scientific principles governing phenomena.

COMTE’S  LAW OF THREE STAGE
Three Stages	Theological Stage	Metaphysical Stage	Positive Stage
Nature of Society	Military Society	Legal Society	Industrial Society
Unit of Society	Family	Nation	Entere Humanity
Basic Principle or type of order	Love of family or domestic order	Mutual co-existence or collective order	Universality or Universal order
Prevailing Sentiment	Affection of Attachment	Mutual respect or veneration	Kindness or Benevolence

MORGAN

Believing that human society have evolved from lower into higher types. Morgan saw a series of fixed technological stages through which societies passed from savagery to barbarism to civilization.

(i) Savagery Stage: To begin with man lived in savage society, which had an older period, a middle period (synchronizing with fishing and the use of fire), and a later period (when the bow and arrow were used).

(ii) Barbarism: With the invention of pottery, a man entered the order period of barbarism. The domestication of animals and cultivation on plants by irrigation ushered in the middle period of barbarism. From the time of the process of the smelting iron are was invented and iron tools made use of, till the next change, man lived in the later period of barbarism.

(iii) Civilization: The stage, ushered in by the invention of a phonetic alphabet and writing. Civilization, according to Morgan, was as well as the contemporary condition of western European society.

MARX

Marx believed that human society passes through various stages, each with its own well-defined organizational system. Each successive stage comes into existence as a result of conflict with the one proceeding it. Change from one stage to another is due to the change in the economic factors. According to Marx the stages are as follows:

(i) Primitive Communism: The first is primitive communism; on which there is no private property. Classes did not exist during this stage when the societies were based on the sort of socialist mode of production. In a human and food gathering stage, classes did not exist, since all members of society shared the same relationship to the forces of production. Every member here was both producer and owner. This stage represents a subsistence economy which means that production only meets bais survival needs.

(ii) Ancient Society: In this stage slavery was an important feature in which one class owns and exploits the members of another. When the man started using the result of one day's about over a number of days, the tendency to accumulation increased. This was the beginning of the convention of wealth ownership over objects spread to ownership over men because slaves helped to increase the inflow of objects. In this way, slave and master classes came into being in society and consequently, master morality was conceived. Master morality was the exploitation of slaves. Slave morality was the service of masters. There was a vast gulf between the lives of the two. This increased dissatisfaction which in its own turn, led to class conflict. Slave revolted against the master for equal rights.

Classes emerge when the productive capacity of society expands beyond the level required for subsistence. This occurs when agriculture becomes the dominant mode of production.
(iii) Feudal Society: As time passed the matters did not concede some rights to slaves. They possessed some ownership over land but a major portion of the yield still went to the master. If was the inception of lordship society. In this society, there were two conflicting classes-serfs and lords. This society becomes more and more complex. Lords were superseded by lords and these by kings or emperors. The serf labored and the lords or kings benefited. In order to give sanction to the authority of kings and lords, religion was restored to it.
(iv) Capitalist Society: In this stage, the owner of wealth exploits the mass of industrial workers. Each of these systems is more economic production than its predecessor, but the tensions of class conflict lead to a revolution that results in the fifth stage.
(v) Socialism: Marx predicted that eventually the proletariat would overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish a classless society. The main feature of this society are as follows:

• There is common ownership of the means of production and distribution.
• Economic activities are planned by the state and the market plays little role in the allocation of resources.
• With the disappearance of private property, economic classes also the disappearance of private property, economic classes also disappear and hence the state has an administrative rather than repressive function.

PARSONS

Parsons argues that human society passes through the following stages:

(i) Constitutive Symbolism: It is the earliest type of society, show very low level of differentiation. This means the existence of a set of symbols, largely religious in character, which permeates virtually all aspects of social life.

(ii) Advanced Primitive Society: The second stage is advanced primitive society. Social stratification plays some role in this type of society as compared to the egalitarian character of simple societies. A definite production system develops with agriculture and a pastoral economy.

(iii) Intermediate Societies: These are traditional states writing and literary skills become important in this stage.

(iv) Industrialized Societies: This type of society comes at the highest point in Parson's evolutionary theory. These are highly differentiated societies, the economic and political system become separated from one another.