Signs of civil society

The totality of family, national,moral, religious, economic, social relations and institutions is a civil society, and the signs that characterize the listed social institutions help to disclose the meaning of this definition. Civil society has certain features, which is why it is a kind of separate institution of the state. Signs of civil society define the necessary and most rational form of people's existence, which is based on a reasonable approach and democracy.

If we consider civil society from a positionstructural analysis, it is represented as a complex and specifically structured education that enters into a system of characteristic unification. It is difficult to call such an education because its composition includes various elements, with the exception of the state opposed to society. Specific such education is considered due to the existence of a connection between the parts of which this association of people is composed. They are built quite differently than in society and its subsystem - the state. In the latter one can see the predominance of subordinate, hierarchical, vertical ties, and the signs of civil society, on the contrary, characterize it, above all, by horizontal, equal and coordinating ties.

To make it as simple and correct as possiblethe idea of ​​what signs of civil society are inherent in modernity, you can try to list the structural units that form these features.

In the sphere of economy, such structural unitsare most often private enterprises, joint-stock companies and other production unions, which citizens create, showing their own initiative. In the social sphere, the family can be considered as structural units, local self-government bodies, superiors at work, political parties and other organizations created by society, private institutions for research of public opinion. In the spiritual sphere, structural units are institutions outside state influence, for example, the church, as well as the media, which help to propagate freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, voluntary associations in the field of science, creativity, etc.

The central features of civil society:

- the presence in society of private owners of a certain production;

- active development and ramification of democracy;

- protection of citizens by means of the established law;

- a certain level of culture of citizens.

This small enumeration makes you think,that the main features of civil society are predetermined by the fact that the individual is not confronted with the state alone, but as part of a certain social institution.

Civil society, the signs inherent in it,carry the value of a civilized order. It is always important to remember this. Sometimes the opposition of the concepts "state" and "signs of civil society", conducted along the way "ordering - decentralization and personal freedom", is strongly shifted to the line "rallying-disintegration". This greatly changes the general idea of ​​it. In fact, the signs of civil society create a double burden: it unites individuals according to the difference in their bases and:

1) socializes them additionally;

2) contributes to the emergence of lasting cohesion of society as a whole.

The main structural elements of a civil society are:

1) self-formed communities of people based on self-government. These include the family, business corporations, associations and other associations in the society;

2) a set of relations not belonging to the state activity in the society;

3) the personal and working life of people, their customs and traditions;

4) the sphere of own management of organizations by free people is protected from outside interference by the government.

These elements in science are considered from the point of view ofview of socio-political categories or as independent state and legal institutions that form the signs of civil society.