Founders of Sociology: Comte, Marx, and Durkheim
Auguste Comte
Born in France in 1798, Comte’s work was inspired by the so-called positive sciences (including astronomy, not theology). He is sometimes credited with inventing the term sociology. Comte’s positivist era, or positivism, refers to the achievement of a rational society by natural evolution, the progress of man by the hand of science and technology, and the domination of man over nature.
Theological Stage
This is the embryonic form of knowledge, where theoretical ideas are of a supernatural order, and imagination dominates over observation.
Metaphysical Stage
Observation begins to gain ground, with attempts to explain everything through abstract entities.
Positive Stage
Social phenomena can be explained through invariable laws, attempting to explain all facts by clarifying the material causes.
Comte speaks of universal consensus, an agreement among men. He also talks about dynamic and static aspects of society.
- Dynamics: The analysis of societal movement.
- Static: The analysis of the conditions of existence in society based on consensus.
Comte sees society as a biological organ, where each member must fulfill its role for the proper functioning of society, like a body. Functional cooperation exists at all levels of society.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 and spent most of his life in England, where he witnessed the Industrial Revolution. For ideological reasons, Marx was pursued to Paris, where he met Friedrich Engels, who introduced him to the socialist ideas of Saint-Simon (who stated that technological advances can improve the moral and material conditions of the poorest class).
He witnessed the development of capital and how this transformed the capitalist bourgeoisie and much of society into industrial workers.
Class Struggle
Marx notes that in society there are two groups: exploiters and exploited. Social conflict is the engine of change, passing through different kinds of societies, to reach the communist society where there are no social classes.
One factor of change is technology; others are economic and social relations. The development of trade resulted in the increased power of the bourgeoisie and the emergence of the proletariat.
Ideology
Marx’s ideology envisioned a communist society with no social classes, where no one is exploited. This would avoid clashes and the concentration of wealth.
- Means of Production: Machinery
- Manufactured Product: A product already developed
The Alienated Man
The capitalist and worker are in the labor market; the capitalist as the owner of machinery and capital, and the worker as the owner only of their labor power. In this relationship lies the secret of capitalist production that alienates the worker from the product of their labor. The worker does not own what they produce because they do not own the means of production. They receive a salary for this situation, which is called alienated labor.
Emile Durkheim
Born in France in 1852, Durkheim studied at a rural school and was a professor of philosophy and social science education at one of the most prestigious schools in Paris. He published a journal of social science that was influential in forming new professionals. He died in Paris in 1917.
Durkheim’s work is dedicated to delimiting the subject of study of sociology and its proper method. He recognizes Comte as his teacher, as both attach importance to the systematic study of social phenomena and the role of groups in determining human behavior. They believed in cohesion among members of society as a characteristic of a harmonious society.
Durkheim affirms the need to treat social facts as things, external to individuals and exerting influence upon them. He notes that to access sociological observation, it is necessary to transcend individual states by limiting scientific study.
Social Facts
Durkheim called social facts the prescribed forms of behavior that exist independently of people and are imposed upon them. For Durkheim, society is more than the sum of the individuals that compose it. Society shapes individual behavior and experience, as these social facts existed long before the individual and are transmitted from generation to generation.
Social Solidarity
For Durkheim, agreement between members of a society is a characteristic of a harmonious society. He compares two types of social solidarity:
- Mechanical Solidarity: Prevalent in pre-industrial societies, which are small and have limited contact with the outside. Ties between members are strong, and each is responsible for carrying out any function.
- Organic Solidarity: Characteristic of modern, industrial, and capitalist societies. Members are joined by social relations arising from specialization and the division of labor. Individuals are interdependent, and no one is self-sufficient. It is an organic society because if one individual does not fulfill their function, it impacts the functioning of society.
Suicide
Durkheim published a work called Suicide, which showed that the number of suicides increased excessively in countries that had experienced the development of capitalism.
He identified different types of suicide:
- Egoistic Suicide: Product of the lack of social cohesion and low group integration.
- Altruistic Suicide: Manifested in some traditional communities, which require individuals to offer their lives to serve their community or group.
- Anomic Suicide: Induced by the rapid social change characteristic of industrialized society.
Collective Consciousness
The collective consciousness is not merely the sum of individual consciences but something outside and above the individual. It is the synthesis of a set of beliefs and feelings common to the average conscience of a society. Durkheim believed that punishment strengthens the collective consciousness.
The Concept of Punishment
The concept of punishment is important for Durkheim because the act of punishing reinforces group unity. He notes that punishment is a passionate reaction in primitive societies. In modern societies, the division of labor has developed to such an extent that people can be considered as individuals, and so restitutive sanctions are more prevalent.