Description:
The author analyzes the problem of social progress in the context of the historical stages of development: savagery – barbarism – civilization. I show how, under the influence of the Great Geographical Discoveries, the variety of continental empires was replenished with maritime (colonial) empires. Globalization has given them a powerful impetus for their development. Then, from the XX century, empires ceased to meet the requirements of the changed times. The empire, as a form of organization of social life, turned out to be ineffective in the modern global world and entered into an acute phase of antagonistic contradictions with it.