Solidarity through the division of labour (Durkheim)

According to Émile Durkheim, solidarity arises from the division of labour. Because people can do different things, they depend on one another – and out of this complementarity grows cohesion. For Durkheim, its foundation is altruism.

This entry deals with Durkheim’s idea of solidarity through the division of labour and what it means for altruism, not with his work as a whole.

About the person. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), French sociologist, one of the founders of sociology as a science. His first major work, De la division du travail social (“The Division of Labour in Society”), appeared in 1893. His nephew and student was Marcel Mauss.

What does Durkheim mean by solidarity through the division of labour?

Durkheim asks what holds a society together. He distinguishes two forms, which he places side by side:

• Mechanical solidarity binds people because they resemble one another: the same way of life, the same convictions, a shared consciousness. Durkheim speaks of segmental societies, made up of parts of the same kind.
• Organic solidarity binds people because they are different. Each has a sphere of action of their own, each contributes something the others do not – like the organs of a body.

The second form grows where societies become larger and denser. For Durkheim the division of labour is therefore above all a moral phenomenon, not a merely economic one: its most important yield is not greater prosperity but the feeling of belonging to one another.

Why is altruism the foundation?

Durkheim says so himself, in one of the clearest sentences of his book: altruism, he writes, is not destined to become a pleasant ornament of our social life; it will always be its fundamental basis. For people cannot live together without understanding one another, and consequently without making sacrifices for one another and binding themselves to one another strongly and lastingly. Every society, says Durkheim, is a moral society.

With this, Durkheim stands against the picture of the human being as a mere calculator of utility: cohesion does not arise from calculation but from attachment.

Does depending on others make us unfree?

No – this is one of the most important points in Durkheim. Whoever contributes something of their own depends on the others, because they cannot do everything themselves. Dependence is the expression of complementarity, not its opposite. And it does not diminish us: according to Durkheim, the individual becomes at once « plus personnel et plus solidaire » – more personal and more bound to others in solidarity (our translation; De la division du travail social, 1893, preface, p. IX).

Our reading: depending on others is not collectivism. It is the form in which different people become a community. Collectivism only begins where complementarity is enforced or difference is levelled – where the individual is no longer valued for what distinguishes them from the others (see Collectivism & individualism).

Is a contract enough?

No. Durkheim shows that every contract rests on something that is not in the contract: on trust, habits, rules that have grown over time, the word one has given. If we were bound only by what we had explicitly negotiated, the result would be an extremely fragile solidarity.

Research confirms this. As early as 1963, the legal sociologist Stewart Macaulay found that companies conduct their business far more through trust and ongoing relationships than through contract clauses (Macaulay 1963). An analysis of many studies shows that contracts and trust complement one another rather than replace one another (Cao & Lumineau 2015).

What happens when order is enforced?

It falls apart. Durkheim calls the enforced division of labour an abnormal form: if contracts are kept only out of fear or under force, the solidarity they create is « singulièrement précaire » – “singularly precarious” (our translation; De la division du travail social, 1893, p. 428). Solidarity that holds arises from free complementarity.

To this belongs a thought that surprises: Durkheim rejected the idea of a government regulating markets and prices in detail – because the conditions depend on a thousand particular circumstances that only those who are very close to them know. The rules of an activity therefore belong, in his view, in the occupational groups, close to the work itself. This is the same argument from knowledge with which Friedrich August von Hayek later argued against central planning (Hayek 1945).

Can there be too much attachment?

Yes. In his later study of suicide (Le suicide, 1897), Durkheim describes too little attachment and too much attachment as two dangers: the person who lives without any ties is just as much at risk as the one who is wholly absorbed in the group. Durkheim calls for the right balance between individualism and altruism.

This is the same middle that Marcel Mauss describes when he asks the citizen to be neither too good nor too unfeeling (The Gift) – and our picture of the continuum between altruism and egoism: altruism is not self-abandonment, and independence is not the absence of ties (self-care).

If you are in a crisis yourself: international directories of crisis helplines are available at befrienders.org and findahelpline.com. In acute danger, call your local emergency number – in the EU, 112.

Did Durkheim later think in collectivist terms?

That is a widespread reading, and the sociologist Michael Baurmann starts from it as well: he reads the Durkheim of the division of labour as a „versteckten methodologischen Individualisten“ – a “hidden methodological individualist” (our translation) – and contrasts him with a later, collectivist Durkheim (Baurmann 1999). Against the text, this turn does not hold up in that form. Methodologically, Durkheim was already reasoning from the whole in 1893: collective life, he writes, did not arise from individual life. Morally, by contrast, he moved towards individualism: in 1898 he defended respect for the person as the only common morality that a modern society could still have (Lukes 1973).

City or countryside?

Durkheim ties the solidarity of complementarity to density and size – that is, to the city rather than the countryside. In the large city he even sees the individual freed from the pressure of the community.

Our reading: what destroys cohesion is not a form of settlement. It is massification – people being treated as specimens of a crowd rather than as individuals who contribute something of their own. That can happen in the city, and in the village just as well.

Who protects freedom?

Here we place Durkheim and ourselves side by side, without smoothing over the difference.

• Durkheim: for him, freedom is the result of a regulation that prevents one person from using their superiority to subjugate the freedom of another. Law is the condition of freedom.
• Our reading: an order becomes dangerous when it claims knowledge that is dispersed among countless people, and patronises the individual instead of leaving them room to develop (Hayek 1945).
• Where we agree: no enforced division of labour, no state price-setting, and rules coming from groups close to the activity. Durkheim conceived of the occupational group as a publicly recognised institution; we emphasise its voluntary character.
• Where we part ways: Durkheim sees in law the condition of freedom; we see in an order entangled with the state the greater danger to it.

What does research say today?

• Trust carries the contract. Contracts and relationships that have grown over time complement each other (Macaulay 1963; Cao & Lumineau 2015).
• Independence and public spirit go together. In cross-country comparisons, stronger individualism goes hand in hand with more trust and social cohesion (Allik & Realo 2004) – a relationship between averages, not a statement about individual people and not a ranking of countries.
• Durkheim remains a classic of research on social integration. His distinction between attachment through similarity and attachment through difference shapes sociology to this day (Lukes 1973).

What did Tobias O. R. Alke write about this in 2017?

In Ausgewählte Perspektiven des Altruismus (“Selected Perspectives on Altruism”, 2017), Durkheim is one of the two sociological perspectives. There, Tobias O. R. Alke read him, with Michael Baurmann, as a thinker of voluntary solidarity: solidarity arises from the complementarity of different people, its foundation is altruism, and it cannot be enforced by violence.

Checking against the French original shows: the core holds – more strongly than in 2017, because the sentence about altruism as the foundation stands word for word in Durkheim. Three readings from 2017, on the other hand, do not hold: the “theoretical turn towards collectivism” is Baurmann’s reading, not Durkheim’s path; dependence is, in Durkheim, the expression of complementarity, not its collectivist opposite; and Durkheim assigns the solidarity of different people to the city, not the countryside. The new edition notes this.

What does this mean in practice?

• Value differences. Cohesion does not arise from everyone becoming the same, but from each person bringing in something of their own.
• Accept depending on others. Depending on others is not a flaw but the form in which community arises.
• Pay attention to what is not in the contract. Trust, reliability and the word one has given carry further than any clause.
• Do not force things. What is held together only by fear does not hold for long.
• Look for the middle. Too little attachment and too much attachment both do harm – a good community leaves the individual room.

Related terms

The Gift (Mauss) · Collectivism & individualism · Altruism · Egoism · Community that strengthens us · Reciprocity · Self-care

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By Tobias O. R. Alke