Society is the outcome of acting individuals cooperating.  It’s not the outcome of a few telling others what to do.  This is purposeful human behavior.  They are acting together to achieve an ends.  This is not an involuntary action.  Rather, it’s the result of reason.  Individuals cooperate to achieve a higher standard of living for themselves.   It is not the result of sympathy for one another, but it does cause the feeling to arise.

The individual is collaborating to substitute isolation for society.  Collaborating is more productive than living in isolation.  Thanks to David Ricardo, we know nations can cooperate to achieve a higher standard of living.  This is properly known as the Law of Association.  However, Mises applied this to individuals.  Crusoe and Friday cooperate because it will increase their chance of survival.

Action is always action of an individual.  Society never acts.  Society would never form if division of labor didn’t increase productivity.  As Mises pointed out:

The fundamental facts that brought about cooperation, society, and civilization and transformed the animal man into a human being are the facts that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than isolated work and that man’s reason is capable of recognizing this truth. But for these facts men would have forever remained deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature.  Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors.  No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs.

The fact that we have society is not the result of some instinct.  Each individual looks at other humans to advance his own goals.  Human society is the result of thinking, planning, and acting.  Yes, there are some animal societies.  Those are very different from humans cooperating.  Those societies are instinct.  They must not be categorized with humans.  Only humans have reason.  That reason is what separates man from the animals.

Reference

Ludwig von Mises; Human Action