EMILE DURKHEIM: The Economy as Moral Order

It is not possible for a social function to exist without anymoral discipline. Otherwise, there is nothing left except individual cravings, which cannot regulate themselves because of their essential limitlessness and insatiability, but must be controlled from outside.

—Emile Durkheim

EMILE DURKHEIM belongs to that generation of sociologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who found the subject matter of sociological study in the process of social transformation and the conflictual transition from traditional agrarian societies to modern industrial societies that was caused by industrialization. The question of the possible social cohesion of societies that are marked by increasing individual freedom and the concomitant dissolution of relationships based on tradition had concerned political philosophy since the seventeenth century. Both contract theories and the theory of order of political economy sketched an optimistic scenario for the problem of social order in modern societies. The pacification of social relations is expected by giving up individual rights of sovereignty to the Leviathan or by market coordination, even if the members of society no longer belong to a moral community. This optimism was obviously counteracted by socioeconomic crises, which affected all industrializing societies in the nineteenth century. The misery of the proletarian masses documented in countless contemporary studies and literary descriptions and in the political conflicts—not only between capital and labor, but also between the middle-class, the clergy, and the nobility, or forces of restoration, reform, and revolution (Muller 1983)—make the incipient social structures seem profoundly anomistic.

The development of Durkheim’s sociology and the significance of the economy in it must be understood from Durkheim’s double awareness of crises, which refers on the one hand to the economic, social, and political situation of France after the defeat in the war of 1870–71, and on the other to the failure of the humanities (sciences morales) to contribute to overcoming social anomie. The Third Republic was marked by political instability, which not only caused “elementary democratic rights [to be] institutionalized only hesitantly and comparatively late, but also prevented the strict formulation of a farsighted policy that could have con fronted the nascent socioeconomic problems” (Mu ¨ ller 1983:17). Durkheim saw the economic and political anomie of French society as an expression of a moral crisis, which was closely linked with the changes in economic structure. The development of the market as a dominant mechanism of economic coordination was read as social disembedding of the economy, which disconnects it from the moral order of society. If political instability and economic anomie in France represented elements of the objective social crisis, Durkheim saw the disparate state of the humanities as another aspect of the crisis, because they prevented a scientific contribution to overcoming the anomic conditions of society.

As for the liberal economic theory, the problem was that no reform initia tives could be derived from it because it expected markets to be self-regulating. Durkheim was convinced that only social reforms guided by scientific insight into the laws of society—and not revolutionary abolition or restoration — could overcome the social crises and contribute to the goal of a just social order. For Durkheim, following the tradition of thought of Saint-Simon, Comte, and Espinas, the task of sociology as the science of morality consisted of scientifically discovering social (moral) conditions and their institutional presumptions, which enable social integration and overcoming anomic states. For this, sociology must develop as a science that deals empirically with the bases of social integration. Thus, beyond the political and socioeconomic crises, Durkheim perceived an intellectual crisis in the transition from traditional to modern society, which is also responsible for the anomie in the Third Republic; and he saw reviving the moral sciences as a prerequisite to solving the crisis. Durkheim’s concern with the economy occurs against this sociopolitical background from the specific perspective of a theory that asks for the preconditions of social order in modern societies. The starting point for investigating economic relations is not the conditions of the efficient functioning of the economy, but rather its contribution to the reproduction of social order or, respectively, its potentially destructive effect on social integration.

These general considerations show the three levels on which the debate with economics occupied a central place for Durkheim. First, Durkheim sees that, in the process of the development of modern industrial societies, the economy develops into the structurally most important social realm. At the same time, the penchant toward functional differentiation of the economy in industrial society represents a central cause of economic and social anomie. The development of the economy is read as an increasing deregulation of economic relations, which disconnects their moral links. Contractual relations that are felt by society as unjust become possible and thus contradict the goal of a just social order. The anomie of economic relations is an expression of a lack of social regulation and can be overcome only by restoring a moral rule to the economy. Durkheim’s first reference to economics consists, therefore, of localizing the economy as a central cause of the social crisis in the transition from a traditional to a modern society, and labeling this crisis as moral.

The second reference to economics is methodological. Durkheim develops his outline of sociology as a science of morality in a debate with utilitarian approaches in social theory.

Starting from the primacy of society, Durkheim’s social theory breaks away from both the contract theory of political philosophy and the explanation of social order in political economy based on the harmony of interests of competing participants in the market; and here the critical debate with Herbert Spencer plays a prominent role. Durkheim sees the establishment of his program of sociology as a science of morality in clear opposition to concepts of order that start from the individual.

Third, closely related to this methodological level is an institutional level, where Durkheim argues with economics. Durkheim sees himself facing the task of legitimating sociology as a new scientific discipline vis a ` -vis the other social sciences and humanities, and so he had to demarcate its proper subject area and define its methodological approach. Economics assumed a special significance for Durkheim because it claimed to have outlined a theory of social order of modern societies in the model of the market, and because it could resort to a well-developed theory.

Nevertheless, Durkheim’s rejection of the economicmodel of order goes along with the rejection of classical economics. In Durkheim’s view, the economy must also be analyzed from the perspective of a social order preceding individual behavior; hence, Durkheim’s sociology asserts imperialist claims over economics. From the explanation of the centrality of economics—as a social, methodological, and institutional domain—the debate with the functioning of the capitalist economy can be expected to assume a central value in Durkheim’s work. That is, however, only conditionally the case. The title of Durkheim’s best known monograph, The Division of Labor in Society (1984[1893]), does hint at the investigation of the structures and institutions of an economic order based on the division of labor. In opposition to this expectation, however, neither in The Division of Labor in Society nor in other writings is Durkheim concerned in detail with the structures of the market economy. Durkheim’s debate with economics is directed essentially at the consideration of economic institutions, which are, however, not studied empirically but are considered in the normative perspective of the function they should assume for regulating economic relations. The structure of economic relations in industrial society appears mainly as a pathological deviation from a normative model.

Concern with the significance of economic institutions for the social cohesion of society occurs essentially in the two works, The Division of Labor in Society and Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (1992[1896–1900]). In the former, Durkheim raises the question of how modern societies that are characterized by increasing functional differentiation, can develop the necessary requirements for social cohesion. The analysis of economic institutions is embedded in the critique of Spencer’s utilitarian social theory, and only in the third book of The Division of Labor in Society are some aspects of the empirical structure of economic relations in the process of industrialization described. In the lectures, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, the historical and anthropological reconstruction of the development of the institutions of property and contract are in the foreground along with the justification of the establishment of professional guilds for regulating economic relations in industrial societies. In addition, there are remarks on economics in the lectures published posthumously by Marcel Mauss, Le Socialisme (1971), and in Suicide (1951 [1897]), Rules of Sociological Method (1966 [1895]), and various programmatic writings, articles, and reviews (Durkheim 1885; 1900; 1908; 1978a; 1978b).

The incongruity between the causal significance Durkheim ascribes to the economy for the contemporary social crisis and the negligible analytical attempt to understand the functioning of modern economic structures can be explained with reference to Durkheim’s sociological program itself, on the one hand, and with the division of labor within the Durkheim school, on the other. If it is understood as a premise of Durkheim’s sociology that, even under the conditions of modern social development, social order depends on the moral integration of the actors, and institutions are both an expression and a guarantee of this morality, then the perspective of the economy and its institutions almost necessarily results: economic institutions and economic action must also be bound up morally in mod- ern contexts. In this programmatic nexus of meaning, the analysis of such economic structures, which are regarded as anomic—because they lack the moral bond—loses centrality because it can depict only the data of the pathological condition, which is proved sufficiently in any event by the obvious socioeconomic crisis. It is enough to indicate the anomic condition of the economy and to interpret anomie as a deficit of regulation.

A detailed analysis is worthwhile only for economic institutions like contracts and property, which can be interpreted as moral entities. So, the causality Durkheim ascribed to the economy for the social crisis does not contradict the negligible analytical attention to the existing anomic economic structures, because few additional clues for the necessary reform of the economy would result fromthe analysis. Attentionmust be directed instead to the structural characteristics of functioning economic formations. Their anatomy gives information about the necessary institutional reforms that can transform the pathological condition of the economy to a normal one and thus allow a socially acceptable organization of the economy.

But also keep in mind that, even during his lifetime, more than other sociologists in the early stages of the profession, Durkheim was able to form a school with his program of sociology. Important empirical studies in economic sociology, which refer explicitly to Durkheim’s program of sociology, were produced especially by Franc ¸ois Simiand and Maurice Halbwachs.

In the debate with Durkheim’s concept of the economy, this would suggest resorting to these studies from the Durkheim School. But because, in the context of systematic inquiry, this book is concerned with general concepts, it is precisely Durkheim’s theoretical and conceptual articles that are expected to yield the most information. What stands in the foreground is Durkheim’s premise that stable economic relations cannot be developed if the social bonds between actors are based solely on their selfish interests.