What is society? In everyday life, this term is often used as a synonym for the words "people", "country", "state". However, they all mean what we need, only in a synonymous sense. Each of them has different, particular values.
Socium is a Latin word denoting a certain type of collective. In Russian, its exact equivalent is the word "society". His life is built around the conduct of a single economic activity, starting from primitive times. In historical times, compulsory taxes and duties were added to this. In turn, society represented by the state provides assistance in the form of subsidies to support the economy of individual lands (regions).
Society is the most complex and largest subject of the historical process. This is not just a collection of people, but their organized group. Within society, people coordinate their actions and coordinate them according to certain rules. That is, society is endowed with a unity of actions that will allow us to consider it as an independent subject of historical development.
What is society for individuals? In this aspect, several main features of this association of individuals can be distinguished. Distinctive features of society are the following. First of all, the fact that the regulation of all forms of human life in it occurs on a comprehensive scale and concerns the most important aspects of the existence of people. Society is a system that regulates family ties, security, the ability to enrich and strengthen the power of individuals.
Belonging to it is a hereditary property: its individual members are interconnected and cannot terminate this existing unity only at the request of a specific person. It, for example, cannot be abandoned as a party or a sports club.
The members of society for each other are psychologically “their own”, they feel solidarity, spiritual closeness and affection, which in this sense is much stronger than the “average” closeness between people.
What is the unity that characterizes society based on? The definition of this concept is based on the fact that the main socio-forming factor is a single authority, which rests on voluntary and mutual obligations aimed at improving the living conditions of each member. In order to achieve this goal, society often sacrifices its individual representatives (people who die during the defense of their country during hostilities). That is, in emergency situations, people are willing to make personal sacrifices to help others.
Today, simple (single-level) societies are more common, in which all members are covered by one “social contract”. In the Middle Ages and in the ancient world, composite societies were more common, including various groups within which their own social obligations acted (tribal unions, clan societies). Today, analogues of complex archaic societies have survived in the form of federations and confederations in which the supreme power does not directly manage the affairs of individual entities, but acts only through their representatives.
So, society is the largest subject of the historical process, which has a unity of action. He is capable of reproduction and continuation of himself in the form of a collective of people who are for each other “their own” in the spiritual and economic senses. The members of one society are hereditarily obligated to each other by military non-aggression (limiting the resolution of disputes and conflicts) and mutual assistance, which is guaranteed by a single organized government. All this provides the opportunity to meet the basic desires of people and their security needs.