Humanity. Society. Power

What is Society

For various idealistic schools and directions, society is typically understood as a collective of human individuals united to satisfy their "social instincts." Aristotle noted that “society is sustained by rewarding each person proportionately to their actions; in this context, either one seeks to repay evil with evil, and if such reciprocity is impossible, that state is deemed slavery; or one rewards good with good, and if not, then services are not met with equal services, and the state itself relies on such mutual exchanges.”

Socrates and Voltaire posited that the foundation of society lies in a higher understanding of morality. “All people discovered thus far,” wrote Voltaire, “live in societies even in the most savage and terrifying lands, akin to beavers, ants, bees, and many other species. I have never encountered a land where people live alone, where a male randomly unites with a female and abandons her in the next moment due to revulsion; where a mother does not recognize her children after raising them; and where people live without family and any form of society.”

Hegel grappled with this issue, striving to uncover the internal logic of the formation and development of society amidst the chaos of various interests, wills, desires, and actions of individuals, aiming to discern its objective regularity. It is evident that the views of these thinkers emphasize the absolutization of consciousness's role in societal life.

As for the pre-Marxist materialist concepts of society, they were characterized by naturalism—the reliance on the philosophical principle that all social phenomena are caused solely by the actions of natural laws. Higher forms of existence, social existence, are metaphysically reduced to lower ones, with humans considered mere natural beings. This perspective consequently undermined human agency, subjectivity, and the denial of human freedom.

From naturalism emerged mechanism: the individual was viewed as a social atom, and society was envisioned as a mechanical aggregate of individuals preoccupied with their own interests. Mechanism, in turn, served as the theoretical foundation for individualism, anarchism, and egoism, forming a theoretical model of society characterized by a constant war of all against all. This premise led proponents of the "social contract theory" (e.g., Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke) to assert that society is founded on the necessity of controlling individuals’ actions, a task they believed should be fulfilled by the state.

The fundamental cementing principle of society was perceived either as utility (the Enlightenment thinkers of the 17th-18th centuries) or as love (L. Feuerbach). Here, we observe a convergence between the positions of representatives of idealistic movements and pre-Marxist materialism, as well as non-Marxist sociology of the 19th-20th centuries, regarding the view that there are no societal phenomena unmediated by consciousness.

The founders of dialectical materialism understood society to be more than the mere existence of individuals. Rejecting the notion of an abstract, ahistorical individual, Karl Marx emphasized in the chapter "On Capital" from the "Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1859": “Society does not consist of individuals, but rather expresses the sum of the connections and relations in which these individuals find themselves with one another.”

In a well-known letter to P.V. Annenkov, the founder of dialectical materialism explained: “What then is society, regardless of its form? The product of human interaction. Are individuals free to choose one societal form or another? Not at all. Take a certain stage of the development of productive forces, and you will derive a specific form of exchange and consumption. Take a certain stage of development of production, exchange, and consumption, and you will arrive at a specific social order, a particular organization of family, estates, or classes—in short, a certain civil society. Take a particular civil society, and you will obtain a certain political order, which is merely the formal expression of civil society.”

What then constitutes the essence of the phenomenon of society? It is manifested through the aforementioned interactions among people, that is, social relations. The totality of these relations forms societal existence, characterized by a complex structure. The primary structural elements of this system, as researchers suggest, include:

1. People, that is, subjects in all their diverse manifestations, including individuals, families, classes, smaller social groups, nations, and peoples;
2. Economic relations that determine the social structure of society;
3. Political relations that shape the political system of society along with its structural subdivisions—such as the state system and the political power structure;
4. Social relations—interactions between different social groups within society;
5. National relations—interactions among subjects representing various nationalities within society;
6. Spiritual or ideological relations, and so forth.

The content of society cannot be reduced to any single or few of its structural elements. It represents a complex interplay of all structural elements, their interconnections with each other, and their relationship with the surrounding environment. Consequently, “society” can be defined as a category of social philosophy, denoting the aggregate of interacting subjects striving to meet their needs and engaging in shared life activities across the diversity of its expressions within common spatial-temporal parameters.

In a broad sense, society presents itself as a part of the material world that has separated from nature, reflecting the historically evolving form of human life. In a narrower sense, society denotes a specific stage of human history—social-historical formations, inter-formational and intra-formational historical steps (pre-capitalist society, early feudalism, etc.) or a distinct individual society, a social organism (for example, French society, American society, Ukrainian society, etc.).

“Society,” notes V.M. Shevchenko, “as a functioning system possesses a teleological nature. It objectively seeks to preserve itself as a certain goal, composed of multiple more specific goals. Society may not consciously reflect on the existence of such a goal, may misdefine it, or deny its existence. However, the very essence of life, the practical actions of individuals, indicate the presence of such a goal far more than mere words and theories. This conclusion was drawn long ago in the field of science and was confirmed in the 1950s-60s when society, as a self-governing whole, became the subject of study from the perspective of a science such as cybernetics.”

As one element of objective reality, society is subject to all general laws and regularities of reality's development. Conversely, as a distinct and specific part of it, society is characterized by its own regularities. This duality defines the peculiarities of its understanding, which will be addressed in a dedicated section. For now, we will focus on one of the most complex relationships: the “individual-society” dynamic. As we shall see, this relationship plays a crucial role in the formation and development of the social.