Durkheim, Marx, and Critical Theory on Modern Society

Durkheim vs. Marx on Division of Labor and Social Change

According to Karl Marx, an economic analysis of the divisions of modern society was the most important way to examine social stratification. Marx focused on the means of production as the key to understanding the roots of modern class conflict. He argued that industrial society was divided between profit-oriented capitalists — the people who own the means of production — and the proletarian workers who generated those profits through their own labor. The conflict between the proletarian and bourgeois classes was inevitable under a system of capitalist production, although the struggle between the haves and the have-nots had persisted ever since a societal division of labor had emerged. Thus, "Marx's approach is based on materialism, which asserts that the production of material goods shapes all aspects of society" ("Chapter 4: Society"). It is only because of the false consciousness of people in modern societies that they attribute their failure to succeed to individual character flaws, such as not working hard enough.

Like Marx, Émile Durkheim was interested in the divisions of society. He asserted that divisions of labor, or "specialized economic activity," had increased throughout human history, but Durkheim was more concerned with the impact of this upon societal structure and human interrelationships than with the economic implications of specialization alone. According to Durkheim, "traditional societies are characterized by a strong collective conscience or mechanical solidarity, social bonds, based on shared moral sentiments, that unite members of pre-industrial societies" ("Chapter 4: Society"). In contrast to Marx's stress upon the economics of class conflicts of the past, Durkheim emphasized the positive nature of earlier societies. Pre-industrial societies were not necessarily conflicted, given the clear roles that people had and the need to exist in a state of interdependence in order to survive. Marx agreed to some extent that "early hunting and gathering societies were based on highly egalitarian primitive communism, and that society became less equal as it moved toward modern industrial capitalism dominated by the bourgeoisie class (capitalists)," but he felt that class inequities had always existed to some degree, and that there was no pure past society free from oppression ("Chapter 4: Society").

Solidarity, Anomie, and the Dangers of Industrialization

Like Marx, Durkheim saw industrialization as dangerous, but for a different reason. "In modern societies, mechanical solidarity declines and is partially replaced by organic solidarity, social bonds, based on specialization, that unite members of industrial societies. This shift is accompanied by a decline in the level of trust between members of the society" ("Chapter 4: Society"). The greatest danger for Durkheim was not class division and economic inequity, but anomie — which occurs when social bonds break down, creating a sense of purposelessness within individuals. Anomie is a "condition in which individual desires are no longer regulated by common norms and where, as a consequence, individuals are left without moral guidance in the pursuit of their goals" (Coser, 1977).

Marx stressed that the modern proletariat was estranged from its labor through a wage economy, where workers rented their bodies to produce far more goods than they could use, in exchange for money, while property owners benefited from that rented labor. Durkheim believed that anyone, on any rung of the economic ladder, could experience anomie — an alienation from his or her fellow human beings. This was especially prevalent in industrial locations where people had come to work and left their local communities behind. Marx saw workers' sense of alienation and isolation as the result of a common feeling of political powerlessness and lack of class solidarity; the answer was not a return to or recreation of mechanical solidarity, but a new form of political solidarity.

Marx, Alienation, and the Wage Economy

Marx viewed intensified class conflict as a negative result of modern corporate capitalism. It was generated from the sense of alienation workers experience when laboring for others rather than for themselves, and from producing commodities they do not own. This was inherently demeaning and rendered workers wage-slaves without a sense of meaningful productive purpose. Antagonism between classes over the distribution of wealth and power in society was inevitable because of such alienation. For this conflict to cease, the proletariat must achieve class consciousness and class unity and gain ownership of the means of production — otherwise, they would exist in a constant state of unfulfilled wants and desires.