Conflict as a Foundation for Consensus: Contradictions of Industrial Capitalism in Book III of Durkheim's Division of Labor

Abstract

In The Division of Labor in Society (1893) Durkheim stresses the role of shared practice and spontaneous regulation in modern social forms, proposing that the modern division of labor is organized differently from traditional society, and thus that traditional solutions to problems of social justice and social disorganization are not appropriate in a modern context. He contrasts modern solidarities based on shared practice with the shared community of beliefs and strong external constraints characteristic of more traditional societies. It is Durkheim's position that because modern social forms are organized differently they require a different type of moral foundation. Specifically, Durkheim argues that justice is necessary in an advanced division of labor and that any such society that does not achieve justice stands in a state of self-contradiction. While Durkheim's reasons for arguing that modern industrial capitalism stands in a state of self-contradiction are somewhat different from those of Marx, the argument is in essential respects the same. Both argue that modern industrial capitalist society violates its own prerequisites and that if the fundamental needs of the human being for justice and reciprocity are not met that social form will destroy itself from within. The consequences of the argument that justice is a functional necessity in a modern division of labor context are fundamental and profound in an age of globalization.