Social Community

Also known as “community of people”. A stable social group of people connected by certain bonds in the course of their common social practice and social life. It refers to a wide range of classes, political parties, nationalities, countries, enterprises, communities, schools, families, as well as clans and tribes in primitive societies. There is a close relation between the social community and the human individual. On the one hand, the social community is a complex that consists of individuals, each of which is the product of certain social relations and the basis upon which individuals depend for their existence; when individuals are weak or incompetent, they rely more on the social community. The development of the social community also provides a sound foundation for the development of the individual. At the same time, without the development of the individual, there can be no development of the social community.

The social community is connected with a certain mode of social production. The features and forms of a social community are influenced and conditioned by the state of development of the mode of production of society. With the development and change of mode of production of society, the social community will have a process of emergence and development. In primitive society, the level of productive forces was extremely low, and many factors including natural conditions constrained and even threatened the existence of man. In order to satisfy their needs of existence, men had to form groups and jointly engage in labor, and they formed the productive forces of clans and tribes and corresponding forms of intercourse of clans and tribes. History has shown that primitive man could have a material basis for existence only if he belonged to a tribe. At the end of primitive society, with the emergence of private property, the family was formed as a unit of production and life, characterized by the common life of the two sexes and the marriage relations. Clans, tribes and families were all communities bound by blood ties. After the emergence of classes, the end of the gentile constitution was approaching. Society was outgrowing it more every day; even the worst evils that had grown up under its eyes were beyond its power to check or remove. But in the meantime, the state had quietly been developing. Arriving at the capitalist society, the development of capitalism and the dissolution of the natural economy formed the modern nation and the modern state in the capitalist epoch. The main feature of the nation-state is no longer blood ties, but a common territory, a common language, a common economic life, a common culture and psychological make-up. The formation of modern nations is interconnected with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production and its unified domestic market. The formation of modern nations is interrelated with the emergence of the capitalist mode of production and its unified domestic market. The development of a mode of production of society is also influenced and conditioned by the social community to some extent. The development of the mode of production in modern societies requires both the development of a community of nationalities and, at the same time, the formation of a broader community of people that transcends the boundaries of the national community. For example, economic communities, political communities, etc., constitute a kind of social community because of common interests in a certain aspect, recognized institutions and a specific area of residence.

In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels dealt with the part played by the social community and arrived at the judgement of the “substitutes for the community”, “illusory community” and “real community” by analyzing class society and the future ideal society. They held that only within the community has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; hence personal freedom becomes possible only within the community. Otherwise, there is no way to realize his personal powers. However, “in the previous substitutes for the community, in the state, etc., personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed under the conditions of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class. The illusory community in which individuals have up till now combined always took on an independent existence in relation to them, and since it was the combination of one class over against another, it was at the same time for the oppressed class not only a completely illusory community, but a new fetter as well.” Marx called a community built on the domination of one social group over another “substitutes for the community”, “illusory community”. Only in the future communist society can a “real community” be formed. In the “real community”, given that a rational division of labor among all is implemented, men will co-operate with each other, learn from each other, and complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to realize their full and free development as much as possible. The development of the communist mode of production will lead to the gradual disappearance of national boundaries and the formation of a worldwide community of people.