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The term "Alienation" in, what I dare to label "normal" context, refers to a feeling of separateness, of being alone and apart from others. For Karl Marx, alienation was not a feeling nor a mental condition, but an economic and social condition of class society. Not only in any society though, he (strongly identifying with a communist society) aims this social theory as that which affects a capitalist society. Alienation, in simple Marxist terms, refers to the separation of the large population of wage workers and the fruits of their labor; their production.
Marx first expressed the idea, "The object that labor produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer."(Marx. 1) Most of us don 't own the tools and machinery we work with nor the products that we produce because they belong to the capitalist that hired us. But everything we work on and in at some point comes from human labor. The irony is that everywhere we turn, we are confronted with the work of our own hands and brains, and yet these products of our labor appear as things outside of us, and outside of our control. Work and the products of work dominate us, rather than the other way around. Rather than being a place to fulfill our potential, the workplace is merely a place we are compelled to go in order to obtain money to buy the things we need. "Hence," Marx wrote, "the worker feels himself only when he is not working; when he is working, he does not feel himself. He is at home when he is not working, and not at home when he is working. His labor is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labor ' '( Marx pg.37) It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself.
In capitalist production, goods are produced for the market in order to get a profit. What matters for the worker is that he orshe gets an adequate amount for his or her labor. What is being produced is, in this sense, immaterial. It is also completely immaterial to the capitalists. So long as whatever they are making can find a market and be sold at a profit, they don 't care whether they are selling apples or oranges. In this process, the capitalist sees the worker as merely a component of the production. Like a fruit-a commodity to be squeezed as much as possible. More importantly, the aim of production is profit rather than human need. Past production, machinery and materials are all controlled by the capitalists which completely dominate living labor. Workers are literally slaves to the machine and the work process. It controls them, rather than the other way around.
Perhaps one of the most degrading forms alienation Marx speaks of is the way in which everything can become a commodity to be bought and sold, including sex. There is another aspect to alienation which Marx called the "fetishism of commodities." What he meant by this strange phrase is the way in which the social relation between human beings, in capitalist market production, takes "the fantastic form of a relation between things." The anarchic, unplanned nature of production for the market means that its participants are unable to exercise any control over it. What results is that the onset of economic boom and the lurch into slump are events that happen independently of the participants. "To them," says Marx, "their own social action takes the form of the actions of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them."(Marx.Pg34) The only way to overcome alienation is for workers to collectively abolish their separation from ownership and control of the means of production, and to use that control to abolish the market and replace it with conscious planning for human need.
One of the key concepts in Marxist thought is ideology. Marx says that ideology is a "camera obscura" which turns the image on reality on its head. In other words, Marx affirms to the belief that ideology reflects an inverted image of social reality, which is distorted and false. He says that the truth of reality and reality 'as it is conceived through ideology ', are opposed. He ties the function of ideology to material reality and the course of human material development. According to Marx, ideology is the product of material reality and the distorted image of this reality portrayed by ideology is due to social economical conditions. For Marx ideology is always the result of material class conflict and he therefore argues that the ideas of the ruling class have always been the dominant ideas.
According to Marx, whoever controls the means of material production also controls the means of ideological production which sustains the existing relations of production. Ideology, to this complex individual, is the interests of the ruling class. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology, men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
Emile Durkheim, arguably considered the Father of Sociology, adopted an evolutionary approach in that he considered society to have developed from a traditional to modern society through the development and expansion of this division of labor similar to Marxist ideology. He compared society to an organism, with different parts that functioned to ensure the smooth and logical operation and evolution of society. Durkheim is sometimes considered a “structural functionalist” in that he regarded society as composed of structures that functioned together. While he considered society to be composed of individuals, he thought society is not just the sum of individuals and their behaviors, actions, and thoughts. Instead, society has a structure and existence of its own, apart from the individuals in it. Thus, society and its structures influence, constrain, and even pressure individuals in it through norms, social facts, common morale, and social events. While all of these were developed from earlier or current human action, they stand apart from the individual, form themselves into institutions and structures, and affect the individual.
Durkheim was especially concerned with the issue of social order and how modern society holds together given that society is composed of many individuals, each acting in an individual manner with separate, distinct interests. He wrote alot about The Division of Labor in society, saying it was an exploration and explanation of these issues where he finds the answer in the concept of social solidarity, common consciousness, systems of common morality, and forms of law. (Lemert pg 59) Because these forces and structures are not always effective in producing and maintaining social order there can be disruptions in social solidarity and common consciousness. Durkheim connects these to what he calls the forced division of labor and to periods of confusion and rootlessness in what he calls Anomie. Durkheim’s argument is that there are two types of social solidarity describing how a society holds together and what ties the individual to the society. The first type being mechanical solidarity where early societies tended to be small scale, localized in villages or rural areas, with a limited division of labor. In this type of society, people are very similar to each other calling it “Mechanical solidarity through likeness.”(Lemert pg. 64) In this type of society, each person carries out essentially similar types of tasks so that people share the type of work they carry out. Characterized by likeness, Durkheim argues that legal codes or the system of law tends to be repressive law or penal law. If there is a crime in this society, then this crime stands as an offense to all, because it is an offense to the common morality, the shared system of values that exists. Most people feel the offense, and regardless of how serious it is, severe punishment is likely to be ajudicated. Anything that offends the common conscience threatens the solidarity, or better yet, the very existence of society. An offense left unpunished weakens to that degree the social unity. Punishment therefore serves the important function of restoring social unity.
The second type comes with the development of the division of labor and the decline of collective consciousness. Each individual begins to have a separate set of tasks which he or she is engaged in. These different situations lead to a different set of experiences for each individual. This set of experiences tends to lead toward “a ‘personal consciousness,’ with an emphasis on individual distinctiveness.”(Durkheim pg.14) The common situation which created the common collective consciousness is disturbed and people no longer have common experiences, but have a great variety of different settings each leading towards its own consciousnes. This new form is organic solidarity, and is characterized by the dependence of individuals on each other within the division of labor and by a certain form of cooperation. There is a functional interdependence in the division of labor. Organic solidarity assumes not identity but difference between individuals in their beliefs and actions. Durkheim believes that the growth of organic solidarity and the expansion of the division of labor are both associated with increasing individualism. Thus Durkheim argues that there are individual, and probably group differences, at the same time as there is a new form of social solidarity.
Durkheim was also very much credited for his work on this disconnection from society. With this individualism, he identified four environmental conditions that he believed to be responsible for various patterns of high suicide rates, but most discussed was his ideology of Anomie. Anomie refers to an environmental state where society fails to exercise adequate regulation or constraint over the goals and desires of its individual members (Durkheim,27). Durkheim’s concept of anomie is based on a general assumption about the psychological and biological nature of individual human beings. He wrote that the human “capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss” (Durkheim 61). From Durkheim’s viewpoint, individual happiness and well being depend on the ability of society to impose external limits on the basically limitless passions and appetites that characterize human nature in general. However, under the condition of anomie society is the inability to exert its regulatory and disciplining influences. Human desires are left unrestrained and the individual “aspires to everything and is satisfied with nothing” (Lemert 66). From this disillusionment with the pursuit of limitless goals, many people in the anomic society take their own lives. Thus, high rates of anomic suicide are the product of the environmental condition of anomie.
Durkheim argued that the condition of anomie could explain at least three kinds of suicidal occurrences. First, in historical data on suicide rates in Europe, Durkheim found that increases or decreases in the economic prosperity of a society were associated with increasing rates of suicide. Suicide rates were lowest during times of economic stability. Durkheim reasoning was that economic crises disrupted society’s regulatory influence on the material desires of its members. Second, in addition to cases where anomie resulted from rapid economic change, Durkheim also presented evidence that “one sphere of social life (of trade and industry) is actually in a chronic state” of anomie (Durkheim 19). Durkheim explained high rates of suicide among business people as a result of this chronic state of anomie. Finally, Durkheim analyzed how insufficient regulation of sexual desires could also produce high rates of anomic suicide among certain social groups. Single males are in circumstances where their pursuit of physical pleasure is likely to lead to disillusionment and suicide( Durkheim 24) . Marriage functions to regulate sexual desire in modern times, and husbands typically have lower rates of suicide than unmarried males. Thus, the concept of anomie is used by Durkheim to explain a laundry list of social facts.
In conclusion, I believe that both Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim are relevant today in the field of Sociology. So much of their work has been translated and debated but nonetheless heard. Far too often we look at what external affects a theorist conveys through his work when we should focus on the impacts on society in the absence of their work. Both sought to, Durkheim in particular, create a science based on societal knowledge and we as a single race has benefited and learned more about ourselves from it. It is that simple concept that leads me to believe that Marx and Durkheim’s ideology lives, not only through the debates over their work, but through the illustrations of their work in contemporary times.

WORKS CITED

• Lemert, Charles C. "Karl Marx." Social Theory. Boulder (Co.): Westview, 2004. N. pag. Print.

• "Marx on Alienation." Marx on Alienation. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

• Lemert, Charles C. "Emile Durkheim." Social Theory. Boulder (Co.): Westview, 2004. N. pag. Print.

• "Durkheim - Social Facts." Durkheim - Social Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.

Jonathan Luna
Sociological Theory
Fall ‘12

Cited: • Lemert, Charles C. "Karl Marx." Social Theory. Boulder (Co.): Westview, 2004. N. pag. Print. • "Marx on Alienation." Marx on Alienation. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. • Lemert, Charles C. "Emile Durkheim." Social Theory. Boulder (Co.): Westview, 2004. N. pag. Print. • "Durkheim - Social Facts." Durkheim - Social Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012. Jonathan Luna Sociological Theory Fall ‘12