Some of these accomplishments I find in earlier theorists. August Comte, for example, writes of the division of labor and how its development leads to a shift in social bonds from similarity to interdependence. Karl Marx, it seems to me, has a far better grip on how destructive of social solidarity the detailed division of labor can be. T. Robert Malthus writes of the effect of population (and other components of the social system) on various parts of the social system and on the whole in a distinctly functionalist manner. Malthus also uses available government data on birth and death rates almost 100 years before Durkheim. While Durkheim is the first to be accorded academic status as a sociologist, I just don't believe his contributions
