Isabella FassiProfessor Garcelon

Social Theory20 September 2012

Early Sociological Thinkers: Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim

From the 1700s to the modern era, Western societies have experienced unprecedented,

sweeping social changes. American society in particular has come to embody a “charisma of

progress” in which progress has been elevated to the status of a moral ideal (The Good Society,

p. 67). Thinkers such as Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke propagated this now-perva-

sive conception of the American identity as that of progress in what is now known as the utilitarian

individualist tradition. The utilitarian approach has one major, guiding assumption at its core: human

behavior is motivated by the rational pursuit of maximizing one’s well-being and economic security.

Although utilitarian thought has largely been adopted as common sense thinking in American soci-

ety, two of sociology’s early thinkers, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, saw it as an incomplete ex-

planation of the history of society. Both responded to emerging patterns of social change differently,

with Marx advancing a historical materialist conception of society and Durkheim explaining society

in terms of structural functionalism and an early form of symbolic realism.

Although Marx cannot be considered a utilitarian thinker, he did not abandon the major as-

sumption of utilitarianism; he merely specified that it occurs within particular historical relations of

production. Marx summarizes this historical materialism in The German Ideology, stating, “The

nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production” (p. 150).

Expanding upon this proposition, Marx puts forth his social scientific analysis by tracing the evolu-

tion of society through examination of the mode of production and division of labor

(p. 150-151). The mode of production of a society consists of the means, forces, and relations of pro-

duction. (The Marx-Engels Reader)

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According to Marx, the mode of production shifts as a result of class conflict. The first mode

of production exists in hunter-gatherer societies, a form of primitive communism in which the divi-

sion of labor is no more extensive than that of familial roles (p. 151). A greater division of labor oc-

curs with the development of the second mode of production: feudalism, an agrarian mode in which

peasants live off of the fruits of their labor and hand their surplus over to feudal lords (p. 153). The

goal of feudalism is not monetary profit, but rather to reproduce the status quo (p. 153). Yet the

greatest division of labor occurs with the evolution of the third mode of production: capitalism

(p. 160). With capitalism comes an unprecedented potential for innovation and open-ended economic

growth. Although Marx admired this potential of capitalism, he also criticized the animalistic nature

of the system; both the horizontal and vertical competition innate in capitalism create a ruthless soci-

ety in which people are under constant pressure to outproduce one another. (The Marx-Engels

Reader)

The most crucial form of competition to Marx was vertical, or that between the bourgeoisie

and proletariat (p. 474). The bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, own the means of production and seek to

minimize wages and maximize profits (p. 474). The proletariat, or working class, seek to maximize

wages (p. 474). The antagonism between the two classes leads inevitably to exploitation and class

conflict because the bourgeoisie must pay a wage lower than the actual value of what the proletariat

produce in order to make a profit and accumulate capital (p. 204). This injustice is held in place by

what Marx calls ideology, or the “symbolic ‘masking’ of power” (p. 172). Workers hold a false con-

sciousness in which they do not identify their own interests, but only the preservation of the power

structure. Marx expresses that for exploitation to end, the proletariat need to generate a class con-

sciousness, coming together in unity with other workers to throw off ideology. (The Marx-Engels

Reader)

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At the core of capitalism is capital itself and how it is produced. Capital is simply accumu-

lated labor (p. 207). As people sell and apply their labor power in the production process, they pro-

duce value (p. 204). When there exists a surplus product, or anything produced in excess of a stan-

dard, the potential for profit follows in the form of surplus value realized at the time of sale. The

commodities produced are sold at certain prices that exceed the wage. In this way, capitalists gener-

ate capital and then are able to reinvest it on an ongoing basis. The glue that holds the process to-

gether is what Marx calls “socially necessary labor time,” commonly known as productivity. Produc-

tivity, or the average time it takes to produce a particular good at a particular time, regulates the fluc-

tuating relations between enterprises and laborers, enterprises and enterprises, wages, and prices.

(The Marx-Engels Reader)

As Marx posits in The Communist Manifesto, “This history of all hitherto existing society is

the history of class struggles” (The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 473). For Marx, the end of class

struggle coincides with arrival at communism, including the abolition of private property, the means

of production, and the state. According to Marx, capitalism planted the seeds of its own destruction

(“The Return of Karl Marx” p. 6). Communism was to be the revolution of the proletariat throughout

the world. Although a global communist revolution has not taken place as Marx predicted, much of

his analysis of capitalism remains incredibly significant in modern sociology and economics.

Unlike Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim rejects utilitarianism entirely. Durkheim’s work commu-

nicates his belief that economic reductionism in all forms ends up producing contradictions, the most

notable of which is that economy precedes culture, politics, religion, and the like (Bellah p. xxiv).

According to Durkheim, society is “‘...above all a composition of ideas, beliefs, and sentiments of all

sorts which realize themselves through individuals’” (Bellah p. ix). In contrast to Marx, Durkheim ar-

gues that symbolic systems precede economy and labor, making them possible in the first place.

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Thus, for Durkheim, social history is not that of class conflict, but instead it is conflict over how to

behave in relation to institutions.

Central to Durkheim’s thought are his structural functionalist orientation and his theory of

representations. Durkheim’s idea of function consists of the role a social phenomenon plays in rela-

tion to other phenomenon; in sociology, functions map patterns of independence (Bellah p. xiv). Ac-

cording to Durkheim, society evolves by adapting new patterns of social integration that are func-

tional for the society at large. Social integration is the ways in which people are coordinated with

each other, following certain norms and customs. The same concept can be expressed in terms of

moral regulation, or how individuals are regulated by norms and institutional constraints. The effects

of moral regulation are, in essence, what Durkheim terms collective representations, or symbolic sys-

tems of meaning. Collective representations make up collective consciousness, in other words, cul-

ture. As new forms of moral regulation emerge, new collective representations and a new collective

consciousness emerge, as well. Regarding representations, Durkheim distinguishes between the sa-

cred and the profane. The sacred refers to representations that deserve reverence and distinction,

while the profane refers to the commonplace and everyday. The definitions of the sacred and the pro-

fane order society symbolically by communicating the relationship between the individual and group.

The last major concept in Durkheim’s work is solidarity, meaning the willingness of individ-

uals to make sacrifices for others in subordination to the group. According to Durkheim, new forms

of solidarity emerge with changes in the division of labor. In hunter-gatherer societies, mechanical

solidarity operates as the solidarity of likeness. With little division of labor, solidarity blooms out of

similarity. Durkheim uses the analogy of an earthworm to portray this idea; if one segment of the

worm breaks off, the worm is still functional. However, when the division of labor intensifies, like in

industrial societies, organic solidarity predominates and a sense of likeness is generated out of differ-

ence. Durkheim compares organic solidarity to the organs of the human body, which, although differ-

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ent in function and specialization, are interdependent and work together. According to Durkheim,

solidarity makes moral regulation possible by eliciting conformity from members of a society. Thus,

the legal system reflects and reinforces changes in solidarity as a reflection of changing moral regula-

tion; the more complex the division of labor, the more complex the moral regulation must be, and

therefore, the more complex the legal system. In essence, the history of law of a society explains that

society’s transition from mechanical to organic solidarity.

(Bellah p. xxiii; On Morality and Society, p. 68-69)

Durkheim’s work helped establish sociology as a respected social science. Considered a pro-

genitor of symbolic realism, Durkheim proposed that patterns of understanding are real phenomenon

that can be analyzed and studied as social facts. Although their two approaches to understanding so-

cial life differ significantly, both Marx and Durkheim established important sociological paradigms

that continue to influence the discipline to this day.

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