What Would Sociology’s Founder Say About 2024’s Culture Wars?

• Today’s culture wars have their roots in conflicts between industrial and pre-industrial ways of life.
• Emile Durkheim, a founder of modern sociology, referred to them as organic solidarity and mechanical solidarity.
• Understanding these types of solidarity can help us better understand today’s political divides.

Introduction

Emile Durkheim, founder of modern sociology and possessor of one of history’s greatest moustaches, published a thesis on The Division of Labor in Society in 1893. One hundred thirty years later, his conclusions are surprisingly relevant to today’s political and cultural struggles.

Read on to learn more about Durkheim’s types of solidarity and how they can help you better understand today’s political divides.

The Industrial Revolution was the greatest transformation of society since humanity stopped hunting and gathering and settled down into sedentary settlements:

• Prior to industrialization, most people lived in squalor. Pre-industrial economists never even imagined a middle class was possible. Now, most people in the world are able to live comfortably.
• It’s not a coincidence that slavery ended around the time industrialization began. Industrialization made slavery economically obsolete, which no doubt helped the abolitionist movement.
• Women used to have to spend their fertile years making as many babies as possible, with the expectation that some would die in childhood. Now they are able to choose how many children to have and can expect they will all survive to adulthood.

You may have read in your history book that the Industrial Revolution ended sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is still very much ongoing.

That’s because the Industrial Revolution is about more than factories and gizmos. It’s about the entire way we organize our society. We have embraced a highly specialized division of labor, and it’s led to enormous demographic changes:

• In 1927, the population of the world reached 2 billion. In 2022, it surged past 8 billion. Humanity has quadrupled in size in less than 100 years.
• At the turn of the 20th century, just 15 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2007, the percent of urban dwellers in the world soared past 50 percent.

If anything, our current era of airplanes, television, and digital technologies has not been a departure from industrialization, but a continuation and intensification of it. We are so committed to industrial society that we may even render our planet uninhabitable in the near future.

Meet Emile Durkheim

Another major consequence of the Industrial Revolution is the founding of the modern social sciences. Many of the first social scientists were intensely concerned by the rapid social changes brought by industrialization. It was the attempt by some of the brightest minds at the turn of the 20th century to understand these changes that led to the founding of sociology, anthropology, and other sciences that seek to understand how society works. (See: Demystifying Sociology: What It Is and Why You Should Know)

One of these first modern social scientists was French scholar, Emile Durkheim. In 1897, he published a study of Suicide in Europe, which is considered to be the first empirical sociological study that adheres to modern scientific standards.

But it is Durkheim’s first work–completed as part of his doctoral dissertation in 1886, and published in 1893 as The Division of Labor in Society–that most directly grapples with the changes wrought by industrialization. In it, he makes a bold claim which is now accepted as fact: industrial societies are fundamentally different than pre-industrial societies. What he perhaps could not have predicted was how prescient his words would remain 130 years later.

Mechanical and organic solidarity

Unfortunately, like most sociologists throughout history, Durkheim was not very good at naming his groundbreaking concepts:

• When he looked at pre-industrial societies, he contended that their social bonds derived from similarities. They look the same. They have the same beliefs. They think, say, and do the same things. They are so similar, according to Durkheim, that they are like the replaceable parts of a machine. So he called the basis of this pre-industrial society: mechanical solidarity.
• By contrast, people in an industrial society are like the parts of the body: specialized, each doing their own unique job for the benefit of the whole. Because of this, he called the type of social bonds that emerge in industrial society: organic solidarity.

Yes, the names are annoying. But few concepts in sociology are more important than these–not least because mechanical and organic solidarity still shed light on many of our problems today.

Major Differences

As the table above shows, mechanical and organic solidarity have a number of very important differences. The first several are fairly self-explanatory:

• Mechanical solidarity is likely to dominate in sparsely populated areas. Organic solidarity tends to take over in concentrated population centers.
• As mentioned above, mechanical solidarity is fueled by similarities. People feel connected to one another because their neighbors are so similar. But organic solidarity draws its power from a highly specialized division of labor. In organic solidarity, it is not our similarities, but our differences, as we each contribute in our own ways to a multifaceted whole, that bind our society together.
• Boundaries are clear and segmented in mechanical solidarity. People belong to families, clans, towns, and nations with clear divisions. Organic solidarity is less bounded, characterized by the constant flux and indeterminate boundaries of markets and cities.
• In mechanical solidarity, the level of interdependence is low. Most people are relying upon their own provisions. By contrast, organic solidarity requires a high level of interdependence. Probably in the room you’re sitting in, there are several items that were manufactured on the other side of the world. That can only happen in a society with high organic solidarity.
• For reasons we’ll delve into shortly, religiosity is high in pre-industrial, mechanical solidarity. Industrial societies characterized by organic solidarity, on the other hand, tend to be more secular and humanist.

But the applicability of these concepts really shines when we consider the last two entries: the type of “collective conscience” and law that dominates under each of these types of solidarity.

Collective conscience

Durkheim was very big on the belief that society is not just the sum of all its individuals. Rather, we create social facts, which he defines in another one of his works, Rules of the Sociological Method, as:

“Every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.”

In other words, these are social realities that are external to us, capable of acting on us even as they only come into being through us. We have internalized these rules, and we keep them alive through a constant process of socialization and self-fulfilling prophecy.

The collective conscience is one of these social facts: it represents the opinions of society at large. In a sense, it is like Freud’s concept of the superego–fourteen years before Freud ever wrote about it. “The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society,” Durkheim declares, “forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or common conscience.”

The kicker, though, is that Durkheim argues convincingly that this collective conscience manifests differently in systems of mechanical and organic solidarity.

• In societies with high mechanical solidarity, the collective conscience resembles the stern, inflexible authority of the Old Testament. The authority is absolute, not to be questioned. It transcends human affairs and is not open to negotiation. One must not run afoul of the collective conscience in these sparsely populated, pre-industrial eras. If you do, everyone will talk about it. Everyone will judge you. And everyone will shun you.
• In societies with high organic solidarity, on the other hand, the collective conscience is far more nuanced and pluralist. People are not bound so tightly. There is more respect for individuality, more room for flexibility, and less totalizing social consequences. There is still a general, abstract desire to do good. But there is less concern with the specifics of how one lives and behaves, as long as one is respectiful of other lifestyles.

This difference in how the collective conscience manifests is most evident in the area of laws, norms, and other mechanisms of social control.

Repressive and restitutive law

Durkheim is concerned with laws, in particular, because he believes they provide the clearest insight into a society’s form of solidarity. We can’t measure solidarity directly, he notes. But we can look at how societies penalize those who commit crimes that undermine that solidarity. “We should not say that an act offends the common conscience because it is criminal,” he argues at one point, “but that it is criminal because it offends that conscience.”

He argues that there are two main types of laws:

• Repressive laws impose a penalty or fine upon the offender, seeking to punish.
• Restitutive laws attempt to return circumstances to what they were before the crime, without regard for punishment.

All societies have a mix of repressive and restitutive laws. What we want to examine is whether one form dominates in certain types of societies–and that’s exactly what Durkheim concluded:

• In mechanical solidarity, repressive law is dominant. Punishment for the sake of punishment reigns supreme. Most crimes are dealt with through the criminal courts.
• In organic solidarity, restitutive law is dominant. The aim is not to punish, but simply to set things right. In addition to criminal law, there are more varied ways of settling disputes (civil courts, mediation, etc.)

Now that you know more about how mechanical and organic solidarities operate, let’s take a closer look at the culture wars of the present day.

Culture Wars or Solidarity Wars?

Here’s a quick review of what Durkheim means by mechanical and organic solidarity:

Mechanical solidarity, according to Durkheim, is characteristic of small, traditional societies where the division of labor is minimal, and people largely share the same values and beliefs. These shared norms, which Durkheim termed “collective conscience,” bind society together like a well-oiled machine. Members are essentially interchangeable, their social roles undifferentiated and self-subsistent.

Organic solidarity, on the other hand, is typical of complex, modern societies marked by a high division of labor. Here, individuals depend on each other due to their differing, specialized roles, much like organs in a body. Shared values and norms still exist but are less all-encompassing, as the collective conscience diminishes and individualism rises. The binding agent here is not similarity but interdependence.

The American political landscape is a clash of mechanical and organic solidarities:

• On one side, we have the politics of nostalgia, a longing for a past characterized by perceived unity, stability, and shared values—a mechanical solidarity of sorts. This camp often leans conservative, advocating for traditional norms and values, stricter immigration policies, and a limited government role, effectively seeking to maintain a specific collective conscience.
• On the other side of the divide are advocates of progress, diversity, and change, who represent organic solidarity. This group, often leaning liberal, values the specialization and interdependence that come with diversity, inclusivity, and expansive social policies. They see America’s strength in its ability to adapt, grow, and integrate varying perspectives—a celebration of individuality within the collective.

This clash materializes in numerous political debates:

• The role of government. Should it be limited to fostering free-market economics and ensuring law and order, as conservative supporters of mechanical solidarity argue? Or should it be expanded to include safeguarding social justice, equal opportunities, and inclusive healthcare, as liberal proponents of organic solidarity suggest?
• Immigration. Conservatives argue that new entrants dilute the traditional American values and culture, hence the call for stricter immigration rules to protect the collective conscience. Liberals welcome the diversity and individuality resulting from a large immigrant pool.
• Universal health care. Advocates believe it ensures that everyone, regardless of their job or socioeconomic status (specialization), can access medical care (interdependence). They argue that this is not just a matter of social justice but of social solidarity in a diverse, complex society.
• LGBTQ+ rights. Organic solidarity proponents argue for the recognition and acceptance of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. To them, these identities and expressions of selfhood are areas of individual specialization that merit legal protection and societal acceptance to ensure social cohesion and interdependence. Contrarily, those rooted in mechanical solidarity often view these identities as threats to traditional gender norms and family structures. They worry that recognizing and promoting LGBTQ+ rights could erode the traditional values they see as essential to societal unity.
• Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education. Although this is largely a manufactured moral panic (CRT is rarely if ever taught in K-12 education), those who promote CRT argue that it helps society progress toward social justice by acknowledging historical racial injustices. These advocates, who lean towards organic solidarity, see the recognition of different racial experiences (specialization) as a pathway to a more equitable society (interdependence). Opponents, grounded in mechanical solidarity, worry that CRT may disrupt shared national narratives and values. They fear that emphasizing racial disparities and past injustices could foster division rather than unity, thus undermining the collective conscience.

We also see a preference among conservatives for repressive sanctions. The intent is to identify specific, concrete behaviors–such as the flouting of traditional gender norms–and express outrage at the violation of their collective conscience. However, because more and more liberals do not acknowledge the conservative collective conscience or the centrality of traditional gender norms, the attempt to shame liberals into conformity does not work.

Liberals, by contrast, are more preoccupied with restitutive sanctions: understanding how and why certain groups have been historically oppressed, and coming up with solutions to welcome them as fully accepted members of society.

Each side views the other as a threat to their vision of America, their version of solidarity. It is, in large part, a struggle between the mechanical solidarity of a homogenized culture and the organic solidarity of a diverse, pluralistic one.

Spoiler alert: Organic solidarity will win.

Implicit in these political and cultural debates is the belief that we can simply choose what kind of society we want to live in. But that is not accurate. Industrial society is now a necessity. Even if we could wave a magic wand and transform society from industrial to pre-industrial overnight, billions would starve. For better or worse, we are now completely committed to industrial society.

• It’s simply not possible to impose mechanical solidarity onto a highly industrial society. It’s too diverse, too secular, too pluralist.
• Mechanical solidarists can alter neither the course of history nor the fundamental laws by which societies operate. They cannot stop the world’s continued embrace of industrialization. They can only delay it using the (diminishing) political power they have.
• The reverse is true, as well: it’s not possible to force a pre-industrial (or in this case, less industrial) society to embrace organic solidarity.
• This is why, from a rural perspective, disconnected edicts are constantly handed down from Washington that seem to make no sense. They are laws designed for a society that embraces organic solidarity–not the rural societies that still remain wedded to mechanical solidarity.

This is likely too complicated to ever become a major part of our political discourse. But many of America’s political divisions today boil down to differences first articulated by a Frenchman in the 1880s. He could not possibly understand many aspects of life in the United States in the 2020s. But his insight into how societies work was so prescient that he was still able to identify the major source of our political divide today.

Do you agree or disagree that Durkheim’s mechanical and organic solidarity lie at the heart of today’s culture wars? What other factors also contribute? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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