The Concept of Social Formation and its Types
The Concept of Social Formation and its Types
In the first part of the paper, I first define the concept of social formation, and then I outline the function of the formation. Social formation is the comprehensive form of the organization of society, which includes the social structure of the sphere of everyday social life on the one hand, the social structure of the sphere of political life on the other, as well as the form and extent of mapping the everyday social structure into the political social structure. According to my conception, the determinedness between the everyday social structure and the political structure is bilateral, but this bilateral determinedness is separated from each other in time. In the second part, I distinguish between the four main types of social formation: monist, semi-monist, semi-pluralist, and pluralist social formation. During the typification, I consider, on the one hand, that the political structure of the given society is characterized by monistic or pluralistic political power relations. The other aspect is closely related to this, that is, what is the everyday social structure of the given society. I point out that, in principle, social status stratification and order stratification expressing greater or lesser degrees of social inequality can be assigned to typical social formations.