№ 2 - 2004
Lyubarsky G.Yu.
Theory of a Complex Social System’s Dynamics (I)

Pointing up inadequacy of traditional organism-recalling and atomistic approaches to the explanation of society, the author makes an attempt to create, as it were, a site for the construction of a theory of complex social systems’ dynamics on the basis of methodology worked out conformably to bio-communities. In the first part of the article, published in this issue, the author outlines the range of notions and theses on which the theory he proposes is to be based. He determines, as the basic element of society, stratum and introduces the concepts of a fundamental stratum, and of a realized one, distinguishing three potentially feasible strategies of realized strata’s behaviour in socium: violent, patient, and explerent (the latter of the three terms, incorrectly formed from the Latin verb expleo, -ere, has been in use in literature since as early as the 1920s). According to his analysis, in the course of initial structuring (i.e. of the development of society out of the primary grouping), consecutive specialization of strata takes place and, as a result of multiple-step iterative specialization, “layers” of strata of different levels form. With that, complexity of society, its wholeness, integrality, its differentiation increase, and at the same time its lability, the degree of interchangeability of its elements decrease.