SOCIOLOGY AND THE NEW SOCIAL THINKING

Abstract

This article represents an attempt to develop a many-sided analysis of factors generating crisis development in social fields and stagnation in the economy, of measures which could initiate positive changes in Soviet society and of the main tasks of sociology as a science in conditions of restructuring.

The author emphasises that the transition of Soviet society from one qualitative state to another (a state of higher order), and that the optimisation of the functioning of its economic systems is transformed from an ideal into reality only on the basis of an all-round account being taken of the real potential of the human factor through expanding the sphere of operation of the individuality factor. If this does not happen, the process of dysfunctional disturbances in the systems becomes irreversible, and stagnant and negative phenomena become social facts.

From the author's point of view, the task of the sociology of restructuring consists in revealing concrete mechanisms for the coordination of system qualities (those existing, being improved or newly created) and the individual social and psychological qualities of personalities, revealing mechanisms contributing to the optimal combination of objective and subjective, general and individual factors for the social and economic development of the country.