Division of labor, its natural selection and evolutionary perspective according to Durkheim, and social power

The mechanical and organic solidarity are based on the presumption that the social evolution has drawn the current characteristic of modernity. From my perspective, Durkheim did a great effort to understand the modern society trying to compare with “undeveloped cultures”. We may find in Durkheim a great influence of Darwin and his Theory of Evolution.

“Moreover, it was through a slow process of evolution that the passage from one state to another took place when the memory of the common origin had faded” (Durkheim 1893: 135)

Although many of his explanations about the evolution from villages to town, and then to cities, are simplified and generalized, his examples refer to how modernity has fixed in the western culture. He says that mechanical solidarity characterized those societies that lack of complex social structures. However, he also admit that, although our current society (occidental) is based on organic solidarity, mechanical solidarity still can be observed in the same conditions that we could find it in villages or clan societies. Thus, based on the different levels of evolution Durkheim’s statements about evolution or “involution” of society from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity, can facilitate our comprehension of the current social division of labor. In addition, his analyses about sacred and profane may illustrate the dependence of humans on the major forces, considering God and the Devil as both sacred things. That dependence contradicts some of his rational and evolutional terms for society, and shows his spirit anti-rationalism.

As Wright Mills (1963) pointed out, the post-modern age, where liberalism and socialism have collapsed and rationality can no longer rule all decisions: ideas of freedom and of reason have be come moot; that increased rationality may not be assumed to make for increased freedom. However, we may find that the roots of certain discourses of powerful levels of societies (governments, armies, companies, etc) are rooted in sacred things, trying to implement a false mechanical solidarity or consciousness. The complexity of the organic solidarity creates and reinforces the power of institutions by which individuals reinforce their identity and their thoughts in the sacred spheres of power. The collective representations are based on the power given by the social power which expects to be guided as a complex and structured apparatus.