Two approaches to analyzing sociopolitical movements as a manifestation of the modern civilization crisis

In social science, there are two approaches to analyzing sociopolitical movements as a manifestation of the modern civilization crisis. The difference between them lies in understanding of the human development process. The substantial approach seeks and finds a single basis in the historical process, and then deduces all social life phenomena from it. The non-substantial approach, on the contrary, considers that such a foundation (substance, essence) does not exist and, therefore, its search is meaningless. Following opposite methodological positions, the representatives of these two approaches variously explain the phenomena of social reality. For instance, from the standpoint of the non-substantial approach, the modern civilization crisis is declared to result from a combination of random factors: technological changes, the hegemony of one or another discourse, the change of the world hegemon in the core-peripheral relations, etc. Hence, from this point of view, the crisis becomes fundamentally inexplicable. Changes that have occurred in the nature of the organization, the forms of activity and the ideology of sociopolitical movements in this case also become random and, as a result, cannot be comprehensively explained. The substantial approach considers the modern crisis to be a result of objective processes taking place in the very foundation of society (primarily in the development of universal labor). Consequently, sociopolitical movements are a form of manifestation of this crisis. The paper emphasizes that differences of these approaches do not have a purely theoretical character, because it is about developing a strategy to overcome the current crisis of civilization, i.e. about the future of mankind.