The book consists of six theoretical-methodological studies on the complex relation between theory and empirical research when examining social structure sociologically. The author systematically investigates the insufficiently clear delimitation of the subject in studies of class-stratificational structure, deficiencies in theories and operationalizions in doing empirical work. All this is placed against the backdrop of the differences between ideological and scientific ways of thinking in sociology and the gap between the normative and the actual in the context of studying the crisis of actually existing socialist societies.