This article presents an analysis of Raymond Aron's sociological conception of 'industrial society', with an emphasis on the idea of the 'primacy of politics'. The discussion of Aron's conceptual and empirical treatment of 'industrial society' is based on an analysis of a selection of his major works. The author explains in what sense this is a genuinely sociological conception and to what degree it is inspired by classical political philosophy. He identifies where Aron departed from the theory of the convergence of capitalist and communist political systems and shows how Aron's conception of industrial society contradicted the central tenets of both classical and official Soviet Marxism. In the article, Aron's conception of industrial society is examined within the context of various strands of comparative political sociology. The author asks whether different approaches than those so successfully put to use by Aron in his analyses of 20th-century societies are necessary in order to fully understand the new realities that only became visible years after Aron's death.
The article focuses on the relationship between marital status and life satisfaction in the countries of Europe. The first part of the article discusses subjective evaluations of life satisfaction and the theoretical concepts that explain differences in the levels of life satisfaction according to marital status. The second part of the article is devoted to empirical analyses of data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the results of which indicate that in the countries studied married people tend to be more satisfied with life than others, even though the strength of this effect varies. The differences in the effect of marriage cannot be ascribed to a given society's divorce rate. In some countries the life satisfaction of the cohabiting population is almost as high as for married people, while in other countries it is closer to the level of life satisfaction observed among single people, and in other countries the level of satisfaction of the cohabitating individuals lies midway between married and single people.