Superiority, subordination, competition, division of labor, formation of parties, representation, inner solidarity coupled with exclusiveness toward the outside, and innumerable similar features are found in the state as well as in a religious community, in a band of conspirators as in an economic association, in an art school as in a family. However diverse the interests that give rise to these sociations, the forms in which the interests are realized are identical.

DEFINE: Simmel is establishing the core premise of formal sociology: that social forms can be abstracted from the diverse contents (interests) that give rise to them.

XREF: Connects to Simmel's broader formal sociology project — the study of social forms independent of content, which parallels structuralism and later network theory.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 198