This article deals with the different senses the word "social" has taken at some fundamental moments of the class struggles since the middle of the nineteenth century. Based on that historical and critical perspective, we analyzed the transformation of the adjective "social" into a noun, and we related it to the rising of the workers' movement and to the emergence of the "social issue". Then we discussed the opposition between "society" and "community". The background of such opposition is the process of "ideological decadence of the bourgeoisie" and the rehabilitation of the feudal past and aristocratic ideals by thinkers as A. de Tocqueville and F. Tönnies after 1848.
Social; "Social issue"; Ideological decadence of the bourgeoisie; Community
