Anomie is defined as “A state in which there are no clear shared rules or norms of behaviour. (Craib 1997: p278) Durkhiem understood societies in terms of social facts; Durkheim saw these as the constraints on human behaviour that controlled them. “A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; everyway of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations” (Durkheim: 2002; p117)) There are two types of social facts, non-material social facts such as norms, morality and the collective conscience were what Durkheim was most concerned with, (Ritzer: 1992: p97) however, these were not empirically measurable and so the material facts such as the law could be empirically measured and used to find out the casual relationships of non-material facts. Durkheim was concerned with how societies were held together, and thought in the modern (organic) society the division of labour did this to compensate the declining common conscience, (Parkin: 1992: p2) “Thanks to it [division of labour] opponents are not obliged to fight to a finish, but can exist one beside the other”(Durkheim: 2002: p137)
Steven Luke’s writes that for Durkheim the problems of modern society was the speed at which industrialisation developed (Luke’s: 1973: p172) Thus the problem for Durkheim was not the division of labour, but the rate at which it was increasing and the effect it had on regulating people, in the division of labour Durkheim wrote “because these transformations have been accomplished with extreme rapidity the conflicting interests have not had time to strike an equilibrium” (Durkhiem: 2002: p148) In these anomic state peoples desires were not controlled, they tried to achieve more than they could and ultimately failed. This is demonstrated in Durkheim’s study of suicide. It caused by the problem of order in the modern society, new morality and norms had not emerged at the same pace as the industrial revolution. (Parkin: 1992: p2)
From the two concepts, modern society for Marx did not give the individual enough freedom to be truly human and for Durkheim the individual was not controlled enough for them to be happy. Their ideas about the nature of man and society were also different for Marx man is corrupted by society and Durkheim saw man as being egotistic and societies role was to constrain him. (Giddens: 1976: p224) Falsifying the claim that “In the work of sociologists they [alienation and anomie] are often taken as synonymous” (Luke’s: 1977: p75) Thus it can be argued that the solution to alienation would cause the individual to be less constrained and this would lead to more individuals feeling anomic. To see the importance this claim has it is necessary to look at what Marx saw as the solution to alienation.
Alienation is not an individual problem, but a problem caused by the increasing private property, division of labour and wage labour. Consequently it is these that need to change. Marx had a vision of a proletariat revolution, which would lead to a communist society that he set out in the communist manifesto, including the abolition of private property, and changes in wage labour. The communist manifesto 1848 sets out that there will be “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes” () This would allow the individual worker to be free from the control of the product and the owner, allowing him to relate rather than compete with other members of his species and himself. However this could take the assumption that the individual will no longer be regulated or desires controlled. To debate whether this is the case the conditions of society proposed by Marx after the proletariat revolution needs to be examined in relation to the concept of anomie.
The first concern of the revolution in relation to anomie is the idea of a revolution at all; the destroying of a society to build a new one was impractical to Durkheim, as it is society that creates man not man that creates society. Also the changes would not happen over night and there would have to be a transitional period. The consequence of this would be worse than the present society in terms of the regulation of individuals, chaos in society, which would result in more anomie. (Luke’s: 1973: p543)
For Durkheim the problem of modern society was to do with the rapid change from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. Thus if the transformation from capitalism to communism is too fast then this will obviously result in anomie as the norms and constraints won’t have sufficiently regulated the individuals and norms corresponding to the new society won’t have had time to transpire. One of the critics of Marx is that he never adequately set out the conditions of this revolution, but he did write in the preface to a contribution to the critique of political economy “no social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed” (McLellan: 1977: p390) So Marx considered the changes on the structure of society but not the moral, believes and values that are also inherent in it.
The main aim of the communist revolution, as set out in the communist manifesto, is to do away with bourgeoisie property. Durkheim did not believe that property had any significance in the underlying problems of modern society and would not change anything. In his work, Professional ethics and civic morals, that we are debating to-day will still persist in their entirety….this state of anarchy comes about not from this machinery being in these hands and not in those, but because the activity deriving from it is not regulated” (Durkheim: 1992: p30) The implication of this is that if private property were to be abolished it would make no difference to the
Marx also saw the ending of pre-history societies with the rise of communist societies, that is the end of class antagonisms and a truly human society could proceed that was classless. However, anomie can be perceived to rise with this because although Durkheim emphasised that people should be given equal chances, people in this sense would not know their place and they would try to achieve goals that were impossible to them.
In conclusion to the criticism that a revolution of the working class that would take over the state abolish private property and end class antagonisms would lead to a society that would give rise to anomy, the final answer would be that yes it does.
From looking at the two concepts alienation and anomie that provided the basis of the two thinkers criticisms, the causes of the problems of modern society were shown to be two conflicting accounts. From this alone we can take the solution of one to be a cause to the other.
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