Comparision Of The Ideas Of Durkheim And Karl Marx

Two key concepts that greatly contrast one another includes Marx’s conflictual yet realistic key concept on exploitation, closely tied to Durkheim’s naïve functionalist outlook on the industrial revolution and solidarity. Marx criticized the industrial capitalist division of labour, whereas Durkheim saw it as an opportunity for workers to express their freedom of choice and come together forming social cohesion. Originally, Marx believed “capitalism inverted the world of work and turned it against the workers thereby developing a system through which works became a means of exploitation.” (2, direct quote, pg 86). While workers only have their labour power to sell, “the fact that labour is external to the workers, i.e. does not belong to his …show more content…
(Paraphrase, pg 76 grint and nixon). However, Durkheim had a more uplifting approach towards the labour necessity and one’s choice to sell their labour power as a commodity. (pg 95, the sociology of work, paraphrase). Nevertheless, although Marx saw the division of labour as a means whereby the bourgeois class extended its control over workers, Durkheim saw the industrial side of it as a progressing feature of sophisticated societies. Durkheim regarded the pathological features of the divisions of labour as unusual forms capable of being transformed and restructured, therefore paving the way for the division of labour to recognize its true purpose in society as the very basis of truly cooperative interdependence, known as solidarity. (6, pg 50, paraphrase). Durkheim argued that industrial society actively freed people from isolation by inducing mutual dependence through the increasing division of labour” (pg 96, the soc of work, direct quote). However, as seen in Durkheim’s notion on suicide, industrial capitalism has high consequences on society such as a greater risk in mortality.