Emile Durkheim 's An Analogy Of A Functioning Organism

In Durkheim's opinion a whole is not identical to the sum of its parts, thus society is not just a mere sum of individuals.

Pope and Johnson (1983) state that Durkheim proposed that society revitalizes individuals and gives them strength to persevere in the face of the vicissitudes of everyday life. Stones (2008), further states that Durkheim felt that we acquired all the best in ourselves and all the things that distinguish us from other animals from our social existence. Thought, language, world-views, rationality, morality and aspirations are derived from society. Thus, the unsocialised individual, the individual divorced form society, the beast within us, is a poor approximation of the highly socialised beings that constitute societies.

Emile Durkheim, was a French sociologist. His theories and writings helped establish the foundations of modern sociology. Durkheim disagreed with most social theorists of the late 1800 's because they thought that individual psychology was the basis of sociology. Durkheim regarded sociology as the study of the society that surrounds and influences the individual. Durkheim explained his theories in his book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895). He says there is relationship between moral values and religious beliefs, which establishes unity in society.Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so called variables oriented approach to sociological investigation. Durkheim developed the theory that societies are bound together by two sources of unity. He called these sources mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity refers to similarities that many people in the society share, such as values and religious beliefs. Organic solidarity results from the division of labor into specialized jobs. Durkheim believed that the division of labor makes people depend on one another and thus helps create unity in a society. Durkheim studied thousands of cases of suicide to demonstrate his theory that a person commits suicide because of the

In DHN, Durkheim argues that sociology must examine what an individual consists of because it is a result of the whole society. It is this society

Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist in the late 1800s and early 1900s who came up with the concepts of social regulation and integration. These concepts have to do with the state of societies and how they work. More specifically, social regulation is the norms created by either formal laws or social pressure. The way people are expected to live and perform their daily tasks or jobs are somewhat decided by social regulation. In its most basic form, it’s what is and isn’t deemed acceptable by societies standards. Social integration on the other hand is the extent to which the group or society matters. This brings up the importance of the individual as opposed to the importance of the society. Strength of social ties within the community are big influences on how socially integrated a society is. These two concepts helped Durkheim better form an understanding for things such as suicide rates.

Karl Marx witnessed first hand the rise of the industrial revolution and the beginning of capitalism. He also became one of capitalisms biggest critics. Marx believed that society needed a better way of distrusting wealth but also a better way a finding people’s full human potential or what he called “species-essence”. Marx believed that what we do connects to who we are, for example, work is what makes us human. It fulfills our species essence, as he puts it. Work allows us to be creative and flourish. However, in the 19th century Europe work did the quit opposite, it destroyed workers, particularly those who had nothing to sell but their labor. To the mill and factory owners a worker was simply an abstract idea with a stomach that needed to be filled. The workers had no choice but to work for long hours for a pathetic wage. Even worse, their labor alienated them. Alienation is a disorienting sense of exclusion and separation. Factory labor, under capitalism, alienated the workers from the product of their labor. They made stuff they couldn’t afford to buy themselves. The products they made were shipped out to other places far way to make money

Designed over two hundred years ago, Karl Marx’s philosophy defines specific characteristics known today as the Marxist approach. In this critical approach, whomever holds the power and controls the factories or means of production, consequently controls the whole society. Marx’s opinion states that the laborers running the factories and thus holding the means of production should be the ones holding the power. However, this idea rarely holds true in practical society. Frequently, Marx notes, powerful people hire others to carry out the labor. This division of power reflects current culture. Two main classes or categories of people exist, the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The bourgeoisie is the powerful, or those who are in charge of

28) to react to and explain the changes society as he had known it. He alluded to how the division of labor as a primary element in the undoing of society. Furthermore, he witnessed the erosion of a patriarchy, so to speak, and feared society to be barreling towards amorality. Without someone instilling good morals into society at large, those who were not strong enough to make decisions on their own would be left behind. It is without coincidence that simultaneously religion’s grip on the masses seemed to be waning. In his book Suicide: A sociological study, Durkheim specifically researches the period between 1841 and 1872. He notes the reason he chose this time period was due to the rich climate of upheaval. (Durkheim, 1951 [1897], p.46) Could this have led Durkheim to conclude that those who were in a more close-knit community, specifically a particular religious community, had a lower of a rate of suicide? Political unrest was pervasive in European society at the time. Many countries were revolting against their governments.

From Durkheim’s perspective, society creates the individuals but also individuals create the society. For Durkheim, the desires and egocentricity of people are only held in check by influences that are created outside of the individual. Division of labor produces solidarity, which leads to a general cohesion of society. Plus, the economy and division of labor have positive effects on society that allows to social unity. On the other hand, Weber sees the religion influences, Protestant ethic is individuals’ being predestined. Everyone has to work hard and demonstrate their ability to reinvest money in their enterprises and maintain poverty as immortal and view the place of work as an improvement. Consequently, the change in ideals and customs are what contributed to the rise of modern

Marx believed that machines were a sign of progress in society and he was not opposed to it. However, it has negatively influenced employees globally. According to Marx, these machines caused workers economic impoverishment as it impacted their wages.. The wage a worker received was influenced by the use value and exchange value of the workers labour. Marx claimed that the there is the labour commodity and the capitalist commodity. The workers exchanged their commodity, known as their labour power for the capitalist commodity, which is the money. The wages are the price of the labour that the workers put forth. Often times, they do not pay workers a quality price for what they earn or how much work they do. They are constantly looking for bargains and people who do not sell their work for much. Industry’s try their best to get inexpensive materials, enhanced machines, and cheaper wage workers in order for them to decrease the amount of money coming out of their pockets. Marx believed that due to the unavoidability of capitalism, business owners are basing their business activities solely on the attainment of profit. For that reason, workers will continue to be replaced with machines causing business owners to decrease their spending on a workers’ labor power, leading the unemployment rate to increase. Marx states that value of labour power decreases causing wages to decline.

The concept of commodity fetishism applies both to the perceptions of normal people and people in everyday life and to the formal study of economics. Economists, both then and now study the economy in terms of the movements of money, goods, and prices, which is essentially, the point of view of the corporation. from this point of view, the social dimension of economic life is considered unscientific and unworthy of discussion. Karl Marx argues that this commodity fetishism allows capitalists to carry on with day-to-day affairs of a capitalist mode of production without having to confront the real implications of the system of exploitation on which they depend.

The fundamental message presented throughout Karl Marx’s Capital is that wage-laborers are exploited under capitalism. Marx argues that regardless of how well a worker is being paid, they are still being exploited by the capitalist in the form of unpaid labor. The focus of this paper will be to explain how and why this relationship between surplus labor and the exploitation of workers is formed in Marx’s opinion.

Marx points out that “the laborers life is to merely increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class.” The more bourgeoisie exploited the proletariats for work, the wealthier the bourgeoisie became, thus reaping the benefits of the proletariats.

During the late 1800s, the eminent German philosopher, Karl Marx sought to create an equilibrium between the social strata by abolishing social classes. His doctrine, Marxism, is based on the idea that the means of production is the foundation of society, and ownership of this dictates the fate of the civilization. Marx attempted to place the means of production, including factories, into control of the people who operated the means of production(proletariat), and not just the owners of it (bourgeois). In Marx’s vision, society is driven not by spirituality, but by material objects. The proletariat and bourgeois may have ambivalent views on the division of wealth, but ultimately, the owners of the means of production make the decision. The

Durkheim thought that the transition from a primitive society to an advanced society would bring about disorder, conflict and a lack of social norms and consciousness (anomie). This then relates to individualism because Durkheim would argue that as we move towards a modernized society where a common consensus is diluted to an individualistic viewpoint it can be seen that individuals are becoming more influential in society rather than society influencing individuals which confused Durkheim.