Emile Durkheim is such an unfairly maligned thinker, and easily matches Hume and Kant when it comes to scoffing and caricature from the academic left when he isn't ignored outright. While his reputation as a conservative is probably deserved, a lot can be learned from Durkheim and much of his logic comports with Marxism.
Certainly, a criticism of Durkheim's mechanical materialism should come before any praise. He ingeniously describes the reproduction of society, but on superficial readings he seems to foreclose the possibility of revolutionary change. However, it's worth clarifying that Marx himself is quite attentive to social reproduction, and from a wide enough scope, the revolutionary process itself is just another function within the ongoing life of society. In fact, as Gramsci points out, from one perspective Capital Vol. 1 is just as much a book about the capitalist plan as it is a revolutionary book (although this revolutionary essence is certainly primary)!
While Marx more than covers the functional role of economic classes, Durkheim's solidarity is a helpful tool for understanding all sorts of social formations, from religions to political organization. Social solidarity arises either from shared consciousness/values (mechanical solidarity) or the division of labor (organic solidarity). Organic solidarity is named for the organ-like roles that specialized people and institutions play in society. These integrated bonds are much stronger than the mechanical associations that come from shared values. People's mutual interdependence within organic solidarity gives rise to a continuous, flexible reproduction, while groups founded on mechanical solidarity maintain association through punitive measures directed against those who dare offend the collectively held morality.
I think this is a good way of thinking about dogmatism and Marxist organization. Mass social democratic parties have a preponderance of mechanical solidarity, with the shared value being their particular conception of socialism. This primitive organizational type cannot innovate or react to changing conditions because the only basis of cooperation is the shared dogma, and innovation in line or tactic is tantamount to an affront to socialism itself. In Marxist terms, mechanical solidarity doesn't allow for the criticism and self-criticism needed to stay relevant to people, and so these kinds of organizations appeal primarily to moralistic strata like the petit-bourgeoisie.
On the other hand, Marxist-Leninist organizations exhibit organic solidarity. Each cadre has a specialized function within their unit which in turn functions within the district which ultimately has a function within the national organization. Organic specialization provides greater room for individual and collective initiative when moving among the masses than the stultifying dogmatism/moralism that defines mechanically solid groups. Of course, a collective socialist consciousness persists in Marxist-Leninist groups, but it is pared down to the true essence of communism.
Additionally, while effective Durkheimian division of labor opens the door to the development of expertise, revisionist organizers try to be environmental activists one day, student organizers the next, so on and so forth, never deepening their organization and thus never growing closer to any one social movement.
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| Durkheim is radical! |
These loose mechanical collectives are often some of the many disembodied organs strewn about the activist left: left-wing gun clubs (security groups without organizations), leftist publishing houses (educational departments without parties), and unaffiliated local socialist groups (local groups without national counterparts). This to say nothing of the constant mitosis of anarchism, a context where any attempt to develop interdependent structure and functional organization evokes moralistic reaction, and, even if successful, often entails the organ breaking away from the body to form a new floundering activist group.
While mergers between salvageable groups likely loom in our future, our main task as Marxist-Leninists is not to gather these abortive organs into a new revolutionary body. Relevant expressions of organization must be formed through the needs of the struggle, and the focus needs to stay on recruiting new cadre from the masses. Additionally, overspecialization can paradoxically lead to social disintegration, what Durkheim called anomie and Marx may have called alienation. Basically, in becoming too disconnected from the whole, there's a risk of misunderstanding our role in greater society and thus drifting away from it. Thus, in building and winning power, it will be helpful to stay attentive both to efficient and nimble division of labor and the need to cultivate shared values, what Mao calls "the principles of collective life'".
