This is the Netflix article my paper references.
Chantel Smith
Prof. Greta Krippner
Soc 305 Sec 11
23 Nov 2009
Marx and Durkheim and Constraint
Karl Marx, with his focus on conflict among groups, and Emile Durkheim, interested in how society maintains solidarity, have vastly different approaches to the study of society. Yet they both agree that when it comes to the economy conclusions are not simply apparent.
The presence of constraint is easily ascertainable when it is manifested externally through some direct reaction of society, as in the case of law, morality, beliefs, customs and even fashions. But when constraint is merely indirect, as with that exerted by an economic organization, it is not always so clearly discernible.” (Method 57)
It is because of the malleability of interpreting what Durkheim termed social facts, that Marx and Durkheim are able to come to such vastly different conclusions concerning the workings of society. In this essay I will look at where Marx and Durkheim disagree in respect to the value of social constraint (i.e. Marx sees constraint as bad, Durkheim sees constraint as useful). But as a launching point, first we must examine one instance where they are in agreement.
Durkheim and Marx agree that when they study the economy they are studying social facts. Durkheim, who coined the term, defines social facts as external and constraining to individuals (Method 59). For a social fact to be external to an individual means that the social environment that patterns an individual’s actions has existed before the individual was brought into the world and the patterns will exist after the individual is gone. Simply that individuals’ actions are patterned is what is meant by socially constraining; individuals feel as if they must act in certain ways because of the way society structures individual’s behavior. Marx agrees that social facts are external and constraining when he critiques previously failed forms of socialism “owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced”. Marx is arguing that the leap from feudalism to communism was not possible because the current social and economic conditions were constraining regardless of individual’s revolutionary hopes (Tucker 497).
Another example of a social fact is capitalism. Capitalism is a concept that would not exist if humans did not exist and yet at birth each individual does not create the capitalistic world that structures his or her activities for the remainder of his or her days. More specifically, as described in the New Yorker article “Tear, Slap, Clack”, the workers at the Netflix warehouse in Maryland do not have the individual agency to arrive at work each morning to negotiate the manner in which they will complete their job. Instead the temp workers come to the warehouse for forty hours a week, take an hour lunch break each day, and work their hands as fast as possible so as to be hired full time at a wage of nine dollars an hour (Sheehan). Because capitalism is a social fact, all of these factors of their workday are external and constraining to the individual laborers.
Durkheim ultimately feels that constraint is a positive aspect of society or the economy, holding together the bonds between individuals (more on Durkheim later), whereas Marx sees constraint as producing estrangement or isolation of the worker from his or her world, also called alienation, and unequal classes of people. According to Marx, alienation results in four forms: alienation between the worker and 1) the object of his or her labor, 2) the labor process, 3) his or her species being (which I will call his or her humanity), and 4) other people (Tucker 76-77).
Workers are estranged from the object of their labor in a capitalistic economy because they do not own the means of production, that is, the materials that they are working with and the end product created. Marx would identify this form of alienation in the Netflix warehouse because the workers sell their labor for wages and do not own the DVDs, sleeves, red envelopes, or even the ergonomic chairs that they sit in; at the end of the day the work they have done is not for them. Similarly, their actions, their “physical and mental energy” (75) - driving the truck to the post office or stuffing and unstuffing the envelopes - are not for their benefit nor are these actions freely chosen (Sheehan). This is alienation in the labor process. Next, Marx believes that the essence of humanity is to produce freely and beyond necessity, but in the system of capitalism “degrading spontaneous activity, free activity, to a means, estranged labor makes man’s species life a means to his physical existence” (Tucker 76-77). The Netflix workers would not sit for so many hours in the Netflix warehouse if the structure of their society’s economy did not necessitate it; it is not rewarding to a person’s humanity to do so. And finally there is alienation between workers and classes. The Netflix CEO’s envelope stuffing rate, a rate that would get the temp workers fired, shows this divide between the classes. If the worker’s product and activity is estranged from the worker, Marx asks, then to whom does it belong? He answers that the capitalist owns it and that the laborer’s “activity is to him an unfree activity… activity performed in the service, under the domination, the coercion and the yoke of another man” (77-78). The CEO does not need a stuffing rate equal to the rate he sets for his workers because the division of labor maintains that he is the capitalist who owns the product and labor, therefore he occupies a position in the class that can subjugate other classes (151).
Returning to the idea of social constraint, Marx believes that certain social facts, such as a capitalistic economy that produces class systems, inequality, and alienation, ought to be eradicated because these social constraints are detrimental to society. He argues that proletariat revolution is necessary because “the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all”(491). But Durkheim would disagree with the Marxian premises that the constraining aspect of social facts produces such negative affects for individuals or that an economic revolution would serve the people well.
With Durkheim’s focus on how society functions to maintain solidarity, he believes that even an unequal class system can serve the purpose of providing reasonable limits, norms, or constraints to its members. “Each in his sphere vaguely realizes the extreme limit set to his ambitions and aspires to nothing beyond…. This relative limitation and the moderation it involves make men contented with their lot…. The equilibrium of his happiness is secure because it is defined” (Suicide 250). For example, it is not necessary for us to know the stuffing rate of the Netflix CEO because stuffing is not a task expected of the CEO just as the warehouse workers are not expected to be proficient at the CEO’s duties. Each set of workers understands only the tasks that are expected of them, which limits their efforts to a conquerable sphere and prevents them of being crushed by the infinite number of tasks that could be learned. Therefore, according to Durkheim, constraint is a positive force for individuals.
Durkheim’s main concern is guarding against anomie, or normlessness, which can lead to increased suicides during economic shifts (246). Because any economic shift, downward or upward, can lessen the strength of norms and result in anomie (253), Durkheim would not support Marx’s call for social or economic revolution. If the Netflix workers were to succeed in a revolt against their CEO, neither party would be secure in their knowledge of acceptable or inappropriate behavior or their purpose in relation to others. Economic revolution for Durkheim would undoubtedly lead to normlessness, which is antagonistic to social solidarity. Durkheim charges that economists (presumably capitalists) and socialists alike work toward the same end of “achieving economic prosperity” and regarding industry, instead of a means to an end, as “the supreme end of individuals and societies alike” (255). He accuses them each of forgetting that ceaselessly expanding economic desires will hamper the solidarity of society and likely produce anomie.
When society and the economy are examined though the lens of struggle and conflict, it is understandable that one would see such negative effects of constraint as alienation and inequality, such as Marx did. And yet it is also understandable that solidarity as a positive effect of constraint would surface when Durkheim examines economy and society with a perspective valuing cohesion.
Bibliography
Durkheim, Emile. The Rules of Sociological Method. Ed. Steven Lukes. New York: The Free Press.
Durkheim, Emile. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Ed. George Simpson. The Free Press.
Marx, Karl. “Capital, Volume One.” The Marx - Engels Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Tucker New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978 294 - 438.
Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” The Marx - Engels Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Tucker New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978 66 - 125.
Marx, Karl. “The German Ideology: Part I.” The Marx - Engels Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Tucker New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978 146 - 200.
Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engles. “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” The Marx - Engels Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Tucker New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978. 469 - 500.
Sheehan, Susan. “ Tear, Slap, Clack.” The New Yorker. 28 Aug 2006: 1-2.
Tucker, Robert C., ed. The Marx - Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978.