False Consciousness and Alienation

Emile Durkheim was born in 1858 and died in 1917. He is often referred as the father of sociology. Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died in 1883. Durkheim considered anomie a central problem of the modern era while Marx focused on false consciousness and alienation. This paper will discuss the conditions that produced anomie, false consciousness and alienation.

Durkheim refers to anomie as a pathological condition in which the moral rules are in a weakened or confused state. Such a state occurs in periods of social transitional change when old rules have declined and new ones have yet to fully emerge (A&0, 88). He believed his society was anomie and believed that new rules for individual life and social organization emerged, society would move from a disharmonious transitional form to a harmonious mature form. He also believed the time in Europe after the fall of Rome as such a period (A&O, 98).

According to www.brooklynsoc.org, Professor Timothy Shortell wrote, the Industrial Revolution produced great tension and turmoil. Durkheim resolved the contradiction by developing the notion of anomie. Developments in the division of labor associated with industrialization facilitated this notion. As work became routinized, broken down into dull, repetitive tasks, workers lose the sense of the role in production, and are less committed to the process and the organization.

According to the lecture, anomic suicide occurs when people’s lives are suddenly disrupted by major social events- economic depression, famines, wars, etc. There is mass social disorganization. Anomic society will have an “abnormal” increase in murder, other crimes, suicide, and unhappiness. If local corporations were in charge of education, social welfare, and recreational facilities, Durkheim believed it would create harmonious feelings among individuals in industrial society and would bring an end to the unregulated anomie of Durkheim’s day (A&O 99).

According

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