On Social Conflict

Social conflict is the major practical problems people in any era have to face, asa universal social phenomenon of human society(especially class society),throughoutthe course of the development of human society from beginning to end. In today’sworld,social conflict is also a major social problem we have to face. Facing the socialreality of this, many scholars at home and abroad have turned to the social conflicttheory in the west, in order to obtain the reasonable explanation to today’s reality,and to find the schemes of resolving social conflict and realizing social order.Although these studies have achieved positive results, but unfortunately, there is littleresearch interdisciplinary, no more than social philosophy angle to study socialconflict from Cross disciplines of sociology and philosophy. This urgently needs us tomake further research from the aspects of theory, to explain the reality of socialconflict in today’s world, especially contemporary China, and proposed somecountermeasures to solve the problem. It is in this context that the author began to payattention to social conflicts, and plans to study from the level of social philosophy.This paper is divided into six parts: An Introduction(the first chapter), definitionof social conflict(the second chapter), reasons of social conflict(the third chapter),function of social conflict(the fourth chapter), regulation of social conflict(the fifthchapter), some thinking of Chinese social conflicts at the present stage(chapter sixth).The first chapter is the introduction. The introduction is divided into three sections.The first section is the social conflict problem, introducing the background andsignificance of this problem in the study of social conflict. The second section is thehistory and present situation of research on social conflict at home and abroad. Thethird section is the research orientation and research methods of this paper.The second chapter is definition of social conflict. This chapter is divided intofour sections. The first section reviews the meaning of social conflict. From theperspective of social philosophy, social conflict refers to external contradictions ofconfrontation people formed in the social practice, communication and developmentprocess. Essence of social conflict is explored in the second section from three anglesin social practice, social interaction and social development. The third sectionsummarizes the types of social conflict from a social view of subject and object. Thefourth section analyzes the basic characteristics of social conflict.The third chapter is the reason of social conflict. This chapter is divided into twosections. In the first section, we investigate those two different concepts of socialconflict, idealism and materialism view of social conflict. In the second section, weanalyze that the reasons of social conflicts from the angle of the subject and the object.Among them, the main cause of social conflicts include four aspects: one is theconflict of interests among the social subjects, two is the main social contradictionbetween consciousness and conception, three is the great changes in social structure,four is the alienation of social subject-- human. The object of social conflict includestwo aspects: one is the basic contradictions of social structural system; two is theinternal contradictions in the basic fields of society.The fourth chapter is function of social conflict. This chapter is divided into threesections. The first section is about the two different schools how to understand socialconflict function, which are the structural functionalism and social conflict theory.The second section is evaluation scale of social conflict, including social subject scaleand social object scale. Social conflict is positive or negative, and finally to seewhether it is conducive to the development of human and society. The third section isthe two basic functions of social conflict, the positive effects and negative effects.However, the difference of positive and negative effects is not absolute. Not all ofbenign social conflicts have positive effects; there are negative factors in benignsocial conflicts. And not all of malignant social conflicts have negative effects; thereare positive factors in malignant social conflicts.The fifth chapter is control of social conflict. This chapter is divided into threesections. The first section is the goal of regulation and control of social conflict. Fromthe perspective of social development, the goal of regulation and control of socialconflict is the realization of social order. From the basic form of social order, its goalis the realization of social order of main body activity and object structure. From thebasic attributes of social order, its goal is to achieve social stability and socialharmony. The second section is the control path of social conflict. Regulatory path ofsocial conflicts can be analyzed from the two dimensions. From the social main body,it mainly includes the following regulation of the main interest, the main idea, themain structure and alienation. From the social object, the regulation of social conflictis to control the social structural system, which is the social basic contradiction ofregulation. This can be divided into two aspects of the contradiction betweenproductive forces and production relations, economic base and superstructure. Thethird section is the process regulation of social conflict. Corresponding with brewingstage, corresponding stage and end stage of social conflict, the process regulationroughly divided into three stages: the first stage is the prediction stage of socialconflict; the second stage is the processing stage of social conflict; the third stage isthe feedback stage of social conflict.The sixth chapter is some thoughts on Chinese social conflict problems at thepresent stage. Starting from the general theory of social conflict and following theprinciple of theory with practice, social conflict problem at present in China isanalyzed. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first section is the presentstatus of Chinese social conflict. This part includes the properties, performance andcharacteristics of social conflict. The second section is the origin of social conflicts atthe present stage in China. At the present stage, the cause of social conflicts includesthe following four aspects: one is the objective existence of the basic contradiction inChinese society at the present stage, this is objective structure factors at presentChinese social conflict, also is the fundamental reason; two is the major changes insocial subjective structure, this is the main structure factors of current China socialconflict; three is the conflict of interest between social main body at the present stage,which is the material factors at present China social conflict; four is conceptioncontradiction of social subject at the present stage in our country, it is the ideologicalfactors at present Chinese social conflict. The third section is the countermeasure ofChinese social conflict at the present stage. Chinese countermeasures of socialconflict at the present stage in our country, mutually corresponding with the cause ofsocial conflict, generally have the following four aspects: One is regulation of thebasic contradiction of the socialist society; two is regulation of the social main bodystructure; three is benefit regulation of the social main body; four is conceptioncontradiction of the social main body.