ИНДИВИД И ОБЩЕСТВО
Individual and Society (their interrelation)
The interrelation between the individual and society varies from one historical period to another because there is no such thing as "society in general", there being in reality only socio-economic formations, nor any such thing as the "individual in general", the individual being always the product of a historically given social system.
The theory of an alleged eternal antagonism between the individual and the social qualifies as "eternal" what is particularly characteristic of capitalism and is historically transient. Under socialism the interrelation between the individual and the social is characterised by the natural combination of individual and social interests and, ultimately, complete harmony between them.
Under socialism and communism the source of satisfaction and the general direction of personal and social interests coincide. Both society as a whole and each individual in society are interested in technical progress, in the constant raising of the productivity of labour, in the increasing satisfaction of the material needs and cultural requirements of members of society. This coincidence of interests of the individual and society on the basic questions of their life does not exclude certain partial and temporary contradictions that arise when individual interest must be subordinated to the social interest.
Success in combining social and individual interests depends, on the one hand, on the increase in social wealth, on the activity of the directing organisations, on their correct implementation of the Party's slogan "Everything for the sake of man, for the benefit of man"; on the other hand it depends on each member of society, on his conscious service of the interests of society. The period of the full-scale building of communism signifies a big step forward in the direction of combining the interests of the individual and society.
Party and government policy for creating the material and technical basis of communism in the USSR, shaping communist social relations, extending socialist democracy, and raising the material and cultural wellbeing of the people aims at achieving harmony between the individual and society. The road charted in the Programme of the CPSU is the road to the creation of an association in which, to use the words of Marx and Engels, the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Общество
В широком смысле совокупность исторически сложившихся форм совместной деятельности людей. О. выступает как особая, высшая ступень развития живых систем, которая проявляется в функционировании и развитии социальных организаций, институтов, групп, в движении классовых и др. социальных противоречий. В узком смысле под О. понимается исторически конкретный тип социальной системы (капиталистическое О.), определённый социальный организм, принадлежащий к такому типу («японский феодализм»), или определённая форма социальных отношений (например, О., противопоставленное государству у Гегеля). Объяснение природы общественной связи (и соответственно общественной природы человека) на протяжении истории социально-философской мысли оставалось центральной проблемой всех теорий О.; то или иное её решение определяет во многом и трактовку отдельных типов общественной деятельности, в том числе индивидуальных действий. Подлинно научную теорию О. создали основоположники марксизма-ленинизма. См. Исторический материализм. Формация общественно-экономическая, Социология.