The social origin of man and the correlation of the interests of social groups in social development

The natural and cultural being of man unfolds only in the social system. The latter is an ordered whole, including both individuals and social groups, united by various connections and relationships. Belonging to such a group was traditionally understood as a social origin. In addition, a person is in a variety of social, material, political and spiritual conditions of his existence, formation and activity, which is usually called a social environment.

The social system has its own specific laws, according to which it functions and develops. The basis of these laws is the interaction between individuals. Buber proposed to call this "I-you" interaction, Max Weber believed that all public relations are built on him, Pitirim Sorokin and Eugene Habermas deduced from him the theory of communication. John Mill believed that social origin also plays a role in this interaction, as, as a rule, we are dealing with the actions and passions of people belonging to different social classes.

Elements of the social system are interconnected by a whole network of stable and ordered links, called the structure of society. It is due to various factors - this is the distribution of labor, and the social origin of people belonging to different groups and classes and fighting for their own interests. Social groups themselves are relatively stable communities of people with common interests, aspirations, values and norms of behavior and are formed within a certain historical stage of the development of society. For example, in ancient India, such groups were varnas. A caste society based on such a division served as a model for Plato, who sang it in his dialogues "Laws" and "On the State."

The philosophy of the state, which first clearly defined the social groups, belongs to Thomas Hobbes. In his Leviathan, he said that society consists of a certain number of people united by common interests or deeds. He singled out orderly and unordered groups, as well as associations that are private or political.

The Great French Revolution and its consequences forced philosophers to reconsider the role of such groups or classes in the historical process. Most British historians - contemporaries of those events - considered the revolution as conspiracies and coups that violated the normal course of events. Hegel, in the literal sense of the word, applauded the revolution, saying that it frees not a concrete but abstract individual and helps to shape civil society.

This universal character of historical events embodied in the categories of the state, the people and certain institutions so captivated European historians and philosophers of the XIX century that they generally began to lose interest in individual phenomena. The national spirit, the class struggle, the national or social origin of people, and the impulses of the relationships of large public collectives have become the main topic of philosophical discussions. Particularly acute was the question of which criteria determine belonging to social groups. If the English economists considered economic and political to be such criteria, then Marx - the relations of ownership of the means of production, Gumplovich - biological and racial, Cooley - family and clan, and so on.

The modern structure of social philosophy also includes the idea of social groups and classes, however, already in a different interpretation. First of all, these are the theories of the "middle" and "new middle class" (Kroner, Aron, Myers), as well as "social stratification" (Sorokin). The latter theory defines the signs and criteria for stratifying society into groups, such as employment, income level, education, psychology, beliefs and so on.

However, strata are more unstable than traditional groups and classes, as they imply vertical and horizontal social mobility both between groups and within them. Max Weber singled out such important factors of stratum formation as public prestige and stereotypes that form both norms of behavior and appearance, as well as a status presupposing certain social roles.