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A Marxist Consideration of Durkheim
ABSTRACT
The historical relation between Durkheimian and Marxist social theory,
as one of "mutual disregard," is indicated. A Marxist criticism of the general
orientation of Durkheim's sociology is then outlined, and this is followed by a
more detailed critical examination of Durkheim's conception of the state and of
the moral regulation of society. Finally, the value of Durkheim's sociology for
understanding present day societies is scrutinized.
The relation between Durkheimian and Marxist social theory has been, for
the most part, one of mutual disregard.' Durkheim himself, although he
claimed to have been familiar with Marx's work from an early stage in his
career,2 paid scant attention to it, and was little influenced by Marxist
thought.3 He wrote reviews of two Marxist studies (d, e), and under his
direction L'Annte Sociologique, between 1898 and 1901, reviewed several
other Marxist works as well as some French translations of Marx;4 but the
comment of P. Lapie that "the materialist conception of history is in favour;
every page of L'Annte Sociologique is an indication of this" is a considerable
exaggeration. In his lectures on socialism, which he began to give at Bor-
deaux in 1895-96, Durkheim had intended to devote the third year to Marx
and German socialism, but the course was abandoned after the first year,
which was devoted largely to Saint-Simon.
It is clear, at all events, that Durkheim was a convinced opponent of
Marxism, and of any kind of socialism which went beyond the idea of
gradual social reform within the limits of a capitalist economy, even though
he conceded some merit to Marx's theory as a major attempt to construct a
social science, observing in his review of Labriola (d) that he considered
"extremely fruitful this idea that social life should be explained, not by the
notions of those who participate in it, but by more profound causes not
perceived by consciousness [and also] that these causes are to be sought
mainly in the manner according to which the associated individuals are
grouped." His principal objection to Marxism was that it attributed too
much importance to economic factors, and to class struggles, in its explana-
0 1981 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-7732/81/040902-17$01.60
902
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Marx & Durkheim / 903
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Marx & Durkheim / 905
II
Let us now consider the lines along which a Marxist criticism of Durkheim-
ian sociology might be formulated. First, however, it is necessary to utter a
warning. Marxism is no longer, if it ever was, a completely unified theory,
the fundamental principles of which are everywhere expressed in exactly
the same form. As I have argued elsewhere (and Bottomore and Nisbet)
Marxist sociology is now probably best regarded as a very general para-
digm within which there exist strong family resemblances between differ-
ent specific theoretical formulations, which may also, however, have sig-
nificant connections with other, non-Marxist theories or models. Hence, in
embarking on a Marxist evaluation of Durkheim I shall try to retain, and
communicate, an awareness that Marxist criticism might well take a some-
what different form, and lead to another kind of judgment on Durkheim's
sociology.
There are three principal directions which a Marxist criticism might
follow. The first is that of a philosophical, mainly epistemological, critique
of Durkheim's basic conception of sociology as a science. There is a good
example of this approach in Paul Hirst's recent study of Durkheim's "at-
tempt to provide an epistemological foundation for a scientific sociology in
The Rules of Sociological Method" (1). But I shall not follow this course here,
mainly because the issues raised by this kind of critical examination do not
so much relate specifically to Durkheim as to the broad and widely debated
question of the proper philosophical foundations of any sociology.10
A second path leads to a critical examination of the general theoreti-
cal and political orientation of Durkheim's thought. Here a number of fa-
miliar themes appear-the emphasis in Durkheim's sociology on solidarity
rather than conflict, order rather than change, and the role of ideas (espe-
cially moral ideas) rather than structural elements, in determining the form
of social life-which have been much discussed by others besides Marxists,
and indeed relatively little by the latter. But a Marxist analysis, proceeding
from an entirely different paradigm, should be able to contribute a more
systematic, more incisive and more explicitly political kind of criticism than
that which is now prevalent, which confines itself to pointing out, in an
eclectic fashion, possible inadequacies in the Durkheimian model, without
proposing any radically different theory in its place. In fact, Sorel's essay,
referred to above, provides a good example of such Marxist criticism, in its
attack on Durkheim's "psychologism" (i.e., his choice of "collective con-
sciousness" and "collective representations" as fundamental concepts in
his theory), his exclusion of the "materialist" conception of a structural
basis of social life constituted by economic relationships, and his neglect of
the phenomena of class conflict; and it is an excellent starting point for de-
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9061 Social Forces Volume 59:4, June 1981
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Marx & Durkheim / 907
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Marx & Durkheim / 909
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910 1 Social Forces Volume 59:4, June 1981
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Marx & Durkheim / 911
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Marx & Durkheim / 913
the case even though in one passage of The Rules of Sociological Method
(c, 111) Durkheim seemed to propose some kind of material basis in claim-
ing that "the facts of social morphology [i.e., the volume (population) and
density of society] ... play a preponderant role in collective life,"20 for
elsewhere in the same work (12-3) he argued that morphological phe-
nomena had no such preeminence, but were of the same nature as other
social facts, that the political divisions of society were essentially moral
and that a society's organization was determined by public law (Lukes,
228-9) and in his later studies it is evident that he came to attribute an
ever greater importance to the role of moral ideas expressed in collective
representations. For Durkheim it is "the consciousness of men that deter-
mines their being," and not, as Marx argued, "social being [that] deter-
mines their consciousness."
III
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914 I Social Forces Volume 59:4, June 1981
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Marx & Durkheim I 915
Notes
1. A similar relation, as Tiryakian has shown, existed between Durkheim and Weber; but in
later sociological theory there has been rather more in the way of comparison and confronta-
tion between Durkheimians and Weberians.
2. In his review of Labriola's Essays on the Materialist Conception of History (d).
3. The difference in the relation between Weber and Marx on one side, and Durkheim and
Marx on the other, is due in part no doubt to the very different intellectual contexts in which
the thought of Weber and Durkheim developed (and in particular the influence of the phi-
losophy of history and historical studies in Germany), but also to the fact that whereas in
Germany there was already a powerful socialist movement, inspired by Marxism, in the
closing decades of the nineteenth century, French Marxism at that time was still relatively
weak and did not present a serious intellectual challenge to the academic social sciences. So
far as Durkheim did feel obliged to comment more extensively on Marxism after the mid-
1890s this was due to the wider diffusion of Marxist ideas in France (particularly through the
writings of Sorel) and in the interest shown by some of his own most brilliant students in
Marxist socialism. See Mauss who noted that one of their "Social Study" circles was devoted
to a systematic reading and analysis of Capital; and also Lukes and Clark who give a fuller
account of the socialist activities of the younger Durkheimians.
4. For an account of these reviews see Raymond Firth (10).
5. The manner of this regulation was later worked out in greater detail in Durkheim's discus-
sion of the role of the state on one side, and of occupational associations on the other. See
especially his preface to the 2nd edition of The Division of Labour, and also Professional Ethics
and Civic Morals.
6. H. Bourgin, cited in Lukes (329).
7. Georges Friedmann (a, 17, 22). Friedmann refers not only to that work, but also particu-
larly to Halbwachs (a).
8. However, more thorough research in the future, emerging from the increasing interest in
the history of sociology, and the greater attention paid to Marxist thought in that history, may
well uncover some valuable critical studies, in Marxist journals and elsewhere; for example, in
the journal of the Durkheimian socialists, Notes critiques-sciences sociales, to which Lukes refers
(328, n.34).
9. Kagan draws attention to the fact that Paul Barth in his survey of sociological theories,
ranged Marx and Durkheim together in the category of proponents of an "economic concep-
tion of history" (Barth).
10. Hirst himself makes this point at the outset when he says that his study is not concerned
with Durkheim per se, but has as its object "to question and to challenge the dominant
conceptions of epistemology in sociology"; and indeed the ultimate aim of his work, inspired
by Althusser's version of Marxism, is to demolish all non-Althusserian conceptions of "scien-
tificity."
11. Paul Nizan (97) cited in Lewis Coser (169). There was an equally strong reaction from the
Catholic Right; Bougle (168) quotes the remark of a Catholic sociologist, Jean Izoulet, that "the
obligation to teach the sociology of M. Durkheim in the two hundred ecoles normales of France
is the most serious national peril which our country has known for a long time."
12. See the qualified argument in this sense by Anthony Giddens (235-72).
13. As Firth recognizes. He then goes on to attribute the emergence of an influential Marxist
anthropology to the fact that anthropologists, in the postwar period of national independence
movements and decolonization, have been "confronted with societies in conditions of radical
change" (7).
14. A socialist-Sorel, for instance-would have said, with some justice, that this "creative
effervescence" and these "new ideas" had already emerged in the form of the socialist move-
ment.
15. Levi-Strauss himself has recognized affiliation between his own conception of structure
and that of Durkheim and the Durkheimians. (See Bottomore and Nisbet 565-71.)
16. See the brief account of their work in Bottomore and Nisbet (136-38, 590-94).
17. It would be preferable, perhaps, to refer always to "quasi-causality" or "quasi-causal
relations," in order to recognize adequately the intervention of consciousness in all social
processes. Max Adler was one of the principal Marxist thinkers to examine carefully the
notion of "social causality" in this sense.
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916 / Social Forces Volume 59:4, June 1981
18. The lectures were given in Bordeaux from 1890-1900, and again in Paris in 1904 and 1912.
The published text is taken from a manuscript written between 1898 and 1900.
19. See the brief discussion of the contrasting views of Durkheim and Marx on the division of
labour, in Aimard (218-29), and the more comprehensive study of theories of the division of
labour, in Bougle (98-161).
20. Even if Durkheim had maintained consistently that a material basis of social life (the size
and density of population) had some kind of explanatory priority, his view would still be open
to the criticism which Marx, in the introduction to the Grundrisse, specifically levelled against
the method of political economy when he wrote: "It appears to be correct to begin with the
real and concrete . . ., therefore, e.g., in political economy, with the population, which is the
basis and the subject of the whole social act of production. Nevertheless this is shown, on
closer consideration, to be false. Population is an abstraction, if I omit the classes, for exam-
ple, of which it consists. Those classes are an empty word if I do not know the elements on
which they are based.. . . Therefore if I begin with population, then that would be a chaotic
conception of the whole. . . "
21. I have in mind particularly the work of Jurgen Habermas and Alain Touraine.
22. In this context it does not matter whether the classes in question are conceived as bour-
geoisie and proletariat (Marx) or as a technocratic-bureaucratic ruling group and various
subordinate, dependent groups (a conception to be found in some recent discussions of
"post-industrial society").
References
Adler, Max. 1913. Marxistische Probleme. Beitrtge zur Theorie der materialistischen Ges-
chichtsauffassung und Dialektik. Stuttgart: Dietz.
Aimard, Guy. 1962. Durkheim et la science economique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France.
Barth, Paul. 1897. Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie. 3d ed. Leipzig: Reis-
land, 1922.
Bauer, Otto. 1907. Die Nationalitdtenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie. 2d ed. Vienna:
Wiener Volksbuchhandlung, 1924.
Bottomore, Tom. 1975. Marxist Sociology. London: Macmillan.
Bottomore, Tom, and Robert Nisbet. 1978. A History of Sociological Analysis. New
York: Basic Books.
Bougle, Celestin. a:1903 "Theories sur la division du travail." Reprinted in Qu'est-
ce-que la sociologie? Paris: Feix Alcan, 1907.
. b:1935. Bilan de la sociologie franfaise contemporaine. Paris: Felix Alcan.
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Sociologique." Archives Europeennes de Sociologie IX(1): 72-91.
Coser, Lewis. 1971. Masters of Sociological Thought. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.
Durkheim, Emile. a:1892. Quid Secundatus Politicae Scientiae Instituendae Contulerit.
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. b:1893. The Division of Labour in Society. 2d ed., 1902. English translation,
New York: Macmillan, 1933.
. c:1895. The Rules of Sociological Method. 2d ed., 1901. English translation,
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. d:1897. Review of Antonio Labriola, Essais sur la conception materialiste de
l'histoire in Revue Philosophique XLIV: 645-51.
. e:1898. Review of Ernest Grosse, Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der
Wirtschaft in L'Annee Sociologique I: 319-32.
. f:1900. Sociology and its Scientific Field. English translation in Kurt Wolff
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Marx & Durkheim / 917
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