As society in the technical and information plan develops, the person loses the independence in the choice of living conditions and becomes the one of many consumers of endless benefits imposed by the industry of services. In such conditions of social modernization there was a phenomenon "elitism" which became the reason of the distorted understanding of elite as the elite by status and material position in society. In this regard there is actual an identification of motivational criteria of elite to differentiate this concept from the concept "elitism". If proceeding from understanding the structure of human motivation from the point of view of substantsional-active paradigm in the social and philosophical theory, criteria have to correspond to the major incentive - ideal factors of human activity: cognitive (informative); valuable; design; reactive.
