The Main Spheres of Social Life: The Social Sphere of Society

Blood-Relational Communities

The kinship community was historically the first form of human association, arising from the gregarious way of life characteristic of our apelike ancestors.

A clan is defined as a group of blood relatives descended from a single genetic line. The clan emerged as a replacement for the primitive human herd during the Paleolithic era, existing in two forms: the earlier matriarchal clan, which united relatives through the female line, and the later patriarchal clan, which unified relatives through the male line.

Members of a clan consider themselves descendants of a common ancestor, whether real or mythical. They live together and relatively apart from other clans, passing down clan legends about their origins from generation to generation, preserving a shared clan name, and adhering to common customs, beliefs, and cults. Typically, clan members hold collective property, with distribution conducted on the principle of equality.

In primitive society, clan relationships played a dominant role in material production, population reproduction, and culture. However, with the transition to class society, clan relationships began to disintegrate. Nevertheless, remnants of clan consciousness continue to persist to this day.

The expansion and strengthening of economic, military, and familial ties—particularly due to exogamy, which prohibits marital relations within the same clan—fostered the unification of clans into tribes.

A tribe represents a characteristic quality of social community in primitive society, consisting of a collection of clans linked by blood relations, shared cultural traits, and a sense of tribal identity. Tribal relationships define the separation of tribes based on territory, language, and culture. A tribe emerges as a result of the unification of two or more closely related clans, often associated with marital ties. The tribe cultivates its language, territory, economic life, morals, and customs.

Within a tribe, a system of centralized management for societal affairs develops. As production advances, the tribe increasingly assumes the characteristics of a unified economic structure, grounded in communal land ownership. Only an individual’s affiliation with the tribe grants them co-ownership of communal property, ensuring their share of produced goods and their right to participate in social life. Within this kinship community, the primitive form of social-economic organization emerges—the commune, which is preserved in various forms across all pre-capitalist societies.

The evolution of communal economics leads to the complexity of inter-clan relations. On one hand, there is a breakdown of the system of equitable distribution of goods and collective ownership, resulting in rivalry and enmity between clans; on the other, marital contacts and the need for broad cooperation, resource exchange, and protection against enemies promote clan integration. These opposing tendencies gradually undermine the stability of kinship orders. Large, multi-clan tribes emerge, developing not only inter-clan but also inter-tribal connections. Clans become divided into intra-clan groups (lineages, sub-clans). The commune segments into household economies of lineages and individual families. The wealthiest households attempt to separate themselves from their poorer kin and clansmen. Blood relations are replaced by neighborly ties.

Thus, the disintegration of kinship communities occurs. On one hand, they differentiate and dissolve into smaller social structures—families; on the other hand, due to the strengthening of ties, territorial communities gain greater significance, giving rise to new social structures—ethnic groups and states.

Among all social structures, the family stands as the most enduring. It emerges simultaneously with or slightly after the clan. At the same time, it potentially encompasses the fundamental elements of societal life as a whole—economic autonomy, organizational and managerial policies, and a system of cultural attitudes. History offers many definitions of the family: as a form of communication (Aristotle), as an economic unit or nucleus of society (F. Engels), among others. In its broadest sense, the family is a social association in which the processes of physical and social reproduction of society occur most organically. It relies on a marital union and kinship ties, with its members connected through shared domestic life and mutual aid. Essentially, the family embodies a system of relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, grounded in the spiritual-moral principles of love, responsibility, and duty. Familial relationships are typically formalized legally in the form of a marriage contract, though families can exist without such formal recognition, functioning instead on civic foundations.

The primary forms of family—group and pair—developed as methods to limit promiscuity (disordered sexual relations). One of the most critical conditions for the emergence of the family is exogamy—a custom arising in the Upper Paleolithic that imposed a taboo on sexual relations within the clan. The characteristics of group and pair families were amorphous, weak, and short-lived. The distinction between these family forms was relative; pair relationships often intermixed with polygamy, allowing for premarital and extramarital, domestic, and ritual ties. Pair families did not always manage a common household; husbands and wives frequently remained in their respective clans, meeting only occasionally. Alongside pair families, various forms of additional marriages existed, such as sororate—marriage to several sisters—and levirate—intimate relations with the wives and widows of brothers.

In the era of late Neolithic, with the emergence of family property and the disintegration of clan relations, the pair family yielded to the more stable form of monogamy. A transitional stage involved the emergence of the patriarchal family from the clan, in which several generations of descendants united under the authority of the patriarch (the clan head). All property of such a family was considered the patriarch's and passed down to one of his children. In the patriarchal family, monogamy was established for women, ensuring the birth of children who would inherit from the husband, but this did not extend to men.

Throughout a significant historical period, the foundation of the monogamous family was not so much individual sexual love as it was economic benefit—“marriage for gain.” The perception of love as a vital value gradually took hold in societal consciousness starting from the Middle Ages, leading to the emergence of a new ideal of the family as a union founded on love. The desire to establish a family on economic grounds began to be opposed by the aspiration to build it on mutual love. A movement emerged for the emancipation of women from domestic servitude. In the modern world, the idea of equality between women and men is gaining recognition almost everywhere and is progressively being realized. However, contradictions arising from differing understandings of the roles of men and women within the family persist.

Today, it is prudent to speak of three primary types of families:

1. Traditional (or Patriarchal) Family. This family is characterized by the leading role of the eldest male, the economic dependence of the wife on the husband, rigid delineation of female and male duties, and the unconditional dominance of the man in managing family affairs.
2. Non-Traditional Family. While retaining the traditional view of male leadership and the separation of male and female family duties, the economic dependence of women on men weakens, with women almost exclusively engaged in domestic work.
3. Egalitarian Family (Family of Equals). This type of family features a proportional distribution of domestic duties among its members, the interchangeability of husband and wife in addressing household issues, and joint decision-making on important matters for the family.

The current historical stage of human development is marked by certain trends in family-marital relationships: — An increase in the opportunities for choosing marriage partners; — A decrease in the stability and duration of marriages; — The proliferation of the “nuclear family,” consisting of just one or two generations (parents and children); — A leveling of the positions of men and women within the family; — An increase in the number of single men and unmarried women.

Given that family relationships encompass various aspects of human life—biological, economic, moral, legal, psychological, aesthetic, and so forth—the family is capable of fulfilling certain functions, among which the most significant are: — Socialization; — Reproductive; — Educational; — Spiritual-Cultural; — Psychological-Rehabilitative; — Economic-Domestic.