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The division of labour can be understood as the division of different roles in the society where each individual is equipped with a particular set of skills that complements other’s sets of skills to create interdependence. While mostly understood in an economic context, in his book, The Division of Labour in Society, Durkheim asserts that rather than just being limited to the economic realm, division of labour helps build social solidarity, by establishing social and moral order in the society. Durkheim argues the division of labour helps to establish social solidarity by saying ‘…the economic services that it can render are insignificant compared with the moral effect that it produces, and its true function is to create between two or more people a feeling of solidarity.” (Durkheim, 17). He sees social solidarity as a driving force that is central to the functioning of a society as it pertains to a particular social and moral order. In the division of labour there “exists a certain allocation of rights and duties that is established by usage and that ends up by becoming obligatory” which makes one adhere to their role in the division of labour (Durkheim, 302).
Durkheim locates the formation of the division of labour outside of the people’s conscious will by arguing that “the division of labour cannot be carried out save between the members of a society already constituted.” (Durkheim, 217). Different modern processes such as urbanization, population growth, and industrialization increase the population density of a place which in turn proportionately increases moral density. As these different developmental processes start to evolve, jobs become more specialized thus, resulting in a more advanced form of division of labour. The shift from ascribed status to achieved status also gives rise to the division of labour as social mobility becomes a possibility.
While establishing the division of labour as a source of social solidarity, Durkheim also acknowledges that the forms of social solidarity are changing as society changes over time. As a positivist sociologist, Durkheim was a proponent of a perspective that believed that societies are based on scientific principles and law. In this sense, Durkheim believes that social changes happened like evolutionary changes. Underlying this social change was the change in the type of solidarity that formed the basis of the society, whereby “the shift from mechanical to organic solidarity might profitably be compared to the changes that appeared on the evolutionary scale.” (Durkheim, xvi).
Mechanical solidarity, calling it “solidarity by similarities”, Durkheim postulates is characterized by a collective conscience that is homogenous whereby people share the same set of core beliefs, for example, people from the agrarian society are more likely to resemble each other in terms of their lifestyle and value system. It is based on traditional values. Using the example of crime, However, as societies become more advanced and complex, individuals in society become more distinguished from one another. The emphasis on individualism develops as there is more social complexity and diversity which Dukhiem views as a central characteristic of the formation of organic solidarity, even calling it “ solidarity arising from the division of labour”. Organic solidarity is characterized by a collective conscience that is more abstract as compared to mechanical solidarity. The shift to organic solidarity from mechanical solidarity is the consequence of the division of labour.
The division of labour has created more specialization and has at the same time given rise to laws that aid this specialization. For Durkheim, the laws of society are the “social facts” that make social solidarity visible. Different laws apply to different circumstances and individual rights become more important. Durkheim argues that mechanical solidarity is based on a repressive law that tends to punish the crime such that it shows the society the harsh consequences of deviating from the norm. When the harsh consequences of deviating from the existing social and moral order are made apparent people are more likely to conform, thus reinforcing social solidarity. There was a decline in the repressive law as the law becomes more specialized and focused on the rights of individuals. In organic societies “ relationships are therefore very different from those regulated by repressive law, for the latter join directly, without any intermediary, the individual consciousness to that of society, that is, the individual himself to society.” (Durkheim, 71) Thus, organic solidarity is shaped by restitutive law whereby the law tries to reinstate social order in a rational-legal manner as compared to the repressive law that shaped mechanical solidarity.
The shift in society from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity is due to different modern projects such as industrialization and the development of a capitalist society. These modern projects bring about an advanced form of division of labor. While Marx argued that the division of labour based which was class would become two polarized groups causing disintegration in society, Durkheim argues that it makes people much more interdependent on each other. As one person only has very specialized skill, that person has to inevitably depend on someone else’s sets of skills in order to function in society. He argues that organic solidarity has a “characteristic feature is that it consists of a co-operation that is automatically produced by the fact that each person follows his own interest.”(Durkheim, 149). But he also argues that self-interest is fleeting and the need for dependence is created by the sense of morality which is stronger in organic society.
A major disagreement between Marx and Weber would stem from their ways of looking at how society functions. While Marx argues that conflict is what shapes and drives society, Durkheim is a strong proponent for social order as the driver of society. While Marx’s conception of social change, particularly the shift from feudal to agrarian social relations and then to capitalist and industrial modes of production also takes urbanization and population growth as important factors, however, Marx would most likely not agree with Durkheim. The role of capital and economy is very much central to Marx’s notion of social change whereas Durkheim focuses on other social reasons as well. If for Durkheim, “organic solidarity” marks the rationalization of an individual’s position within society under industrial capitalism, for Marx, this rationalization is the reinforcement of class-based social relationships which furthers the cash-based labour relations between the Bourgeoise and the Proletariat. For Marx, the reduction of workers as a class into individual workers would mean the denial of class-based solidarity among them. In other words, Durkheim’s division of labour would be for Marx, the labour segmentation. This would turn the working class into a heterogeneous mass instead of a “species-being” and would not allow the workers to recognize their oppression.
Durkheim’s theory for Marx would appear as a model that would justify the class-based relationships in industrial capitalism, fostering division among the working class. The institutions of industrial society that for Durkheim form the basis for organic solidarily such as the school, professional organizations, family, the church would be for Marx the institutions of capitalist domination, they would be the superstructural or the ideological apparatus of the capitalist system. Thus, while for both Marx and Durkheim, while specialization and division of labour is the outcome of modernization and rationalization in an industrial capitalist system, it is also the marker of an oppressive and unequal social relationship. The workers in such a system are alienated.
The concept of anomie that Durkheim coined sounds like Marx’s concept of alienation. Alienation arises out of the worker’s separation from the products of their labour and from the separation of the larger community of workers. His emphasis is on the fact that alienation arises when the worker fails to place him/herself within the larger web of social relations of production. Whereas, for Durkheim, anomie or a sense of normlessness arises out of the inability of an individual to find meaning in the given social structures. It is the period of crisis whereby individuals do not have a particular set of beliefs to refer to. If alienation is the outcome of constraints generated on the worker by the individualist nature of industrial capitalism, for Durkheim anomie is the result of the loss of constraints and the weakening of the institutions that are the source of the social order. While Durkheim would think of the division of labour as a desirable outcome of industrialization, Marx would believe that it would be people conceding to the false consciousness propagated by different social institutions to uphold the capitalist economy. If for Durkheim the “organic solidarity” of a modern industrial society is the ultimate realization of the potential of human social relationships, for Marx the ultimate realization of ideal social relationships would happen with the gaining of class consciousness, revolution against the bourgeoisie, the rise of socialism and eventually the ownership of the means of production and the state apparatus by the proletariat.
While Marx and Durkheim both have interesting insights into the processes of modernization and rationalization in modern industrial societies, I find neither compelling because their theories present us with models of ideal societies. These models follow a linear trajectory of development which do not accurately reflect the way development occurs or even has occurred historically. While to some extent they draw on the history of modern European countries to develop these models, I am ambivalent about whether these models entirely capture the process of modernization in industrializing Europe of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the major question is the extent to which these models apply to the socially, culturally and economically diverse societies of the world. Both Marx and Durkheim present modern Western societies and their trajectories as universal and ideal. There are many countries across the world that have not followed the trajectory of modern Europe. We cannot force these models on those societies. Furthermore, such sociological theories based on Western European models that present us with a theory of progress purport the idea that all societies across the world must go through the same stages of development or evolution. Such theory has historically created conditions for colonial and then imperialist intervention in the name of civilization, modernization, and development. I think critical sociological theory in a post-colonial and post-imperial globalized world must respond to the historical and social diversity of various societies across the world.
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