Systems of Value in Concrete Socio-Psychological Consciousness

Every form of social organisation makes efforts to insure its identity. In other words, the supposition, which must be carried out in order to reproduce a certain way of production in the mode of life, consists in the fact that individuals and social groups accept institutionalized normative system as their own value orientation, to be able to connect their own identity with it. However, the system of socio-cultural values regularly comes into opposition with the social reality, and it makes efforts to solve, ideally, the way of existence of an individual as the member of a group, and the group (class) as a part of society. Its final activity and motor power, which moves people to carry out such a project by means of social action, seems to be hidden in it. The final consequence of a certain contrast of the two or more systems of value consciousness is the open conflict between the social groups. That particularly becomes evident when class in the process of totalization, besides its special interests, manages to speak »in the name of the right of all people«, and equalizes itself with value consciousness of the whole society. That is why Marx, in his programme for the theory of classes, accentuates the social (class) consciousness. In the contemporary, that is, normal conditions, the working class and other social groups, have been exposed to the ideals of the producer-consumer civilization in the process of socialization. The problem, concerning formation of the revolutionary socialistic system of socio-cultural values in the West and in the East, is again rather emphasized. In other words, if we consider values as the symbols of interpretation, choice and realization of social roles and the instruments of social control and pressure, we cannot neglect the ruling culture of the capitalist and state socialist society. Values, that those organist social conceptions (economic growth with the mythology of social ascent-promotion and welfare, as well as with the utilitarian and functionally limited relation between people and groups) originate from, serve to preserve the existing social system. This is particularly important from the viewpoint of socialism, regarded as the project that can be realized only by means of autonomous creativity of the working class and its allies. System of socio-cultural values is particularly important for the »phase« of social revolution after the take over of power, because social processes gradually and unperceiveably change social reality, and the way of people’s participation depends upon whether they share the same system of values with social organisation or they have critical attitude towards normative social consciousness, until it becomes abolished. The author has tried to research the problem taking Yugoslavia as en example The development of industrial society, after the liberation, progressed on the foundations of the capital formation economy, and owing to the process of economization of consciousness, what caused interruption of natural evolution in the system of socio-cultural values, after defining revolutionary movement through nation. Disociability (instead of differentiation) of group-class symbols into the universal and individual ones took place, as well the changes in experiences of temporal social dimension, what caused the decline of energetic potential of group symbols (together with the decline of motivation). A certain disparity between the ideals and social reality has always been present though, but owing to that process, the gap between the inferiority of values and reality, has passed that critical limit up to which the disparity is stimulating. The immediate socio-psychological consequence may be a feeling of insecurity, even frustration, because of the existential thread, with the new value orientation (usually towards past). We find a proof of such a movement in the events of the 70s. In order to find the consequences of social status upon value orientation, the author has occupied himself with some fundamental characteristics of social processes. He showed the influence of the pre-industrial ethos of peasantry upon value orientation of principal social participators in the development of the self-managing socialism. In his opinion,, dominating social processes caused destructuralization and restructuralization of hierarchy, and the content of the system of socio-cultural values in practical, social and political dimensions of the traditional and revolutionary value orientation. The roots of the more prevailing orientations for the group-contracting and so called dirigistic model of management can be seen in the persistence of a certain wage relation, and in the reproduction of the hierarchic structure of power, as well as in the comodity-monetary market relation. Concentration of social power, and its alienation from a producer interrupted, to a grat extent, a possibility for the realization of values of the self-managing social integration, therefore, delegate system and the constitution of basic organizations of associated labour, represent new institutionalized attempt in the realization of self-management. Essential characteristic in the way of life of production strata is still their occupation with the instrumental industrial production, rationally-functional relation, routine labour and monetarization of social consciousness, in spite of the good re suits, achieved in overcoming the situation of alienation by means of the development of self-management on horizontal social level. Functional differentiation causes generalization in the principles of effectiveness and rationality applied on the whole social and cultural life. Alienation and depersonalization are deepened by the products of mass culture in mass-media. Social differentiation, brought out from the distribution of production conditions and position in the division of labour, also represents basis for the consumer aspirations and privatization etc. Specific system of socio-cultural values in an average social consciousness, has generated in such conditions. Universality and homogeneity were being realized only in domain of the consumer style of life, but not so much when the socialist system of all the self-management as a value, comes in question. The author concludes that the existence of the objectively different ways of production, contradictory social status of groups and characteristics of subjective social forces in the contemporary Yugoslav society, cause the existence of pluralism of value orientations. There is a number of varieties among those orientations, but what they all — except the revolutionary self-managing value orientation — have in common, is the fact that they represent a barrier to the natural evolution of human sociability, presupposed by socialist revolution. In the so called average social consciousness, pluralism of values has been noticed in more or less all social groups, and it could be characterized as inarticulate, sincretically connected, very often competitive and mutually excluding ideals