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Historical Materialism and Durkheim's Collective Logic

Author(s): Dag Østerberg and Michel Vale


Source: International Journal of Sociology, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Winter, 1979/1980), pp. 75-89
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20629814
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IV. HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND
D?RKHEIMS COLLECTIVE LOGIC

1. Introduction

My starting premise is that society is a sociomaterial to


tality, a Msociomatter,M consisting of human beings and things
in a useful context. The unity of this sociomatter is a unity of
contradictions, contradictions that relate to the crucial distinc
tion between those who own and those who do not own, a dis
tinction which in turns involves the contradiction between the pos
sibility of knowing the world through using it, and being pre
vented from or largely impeded in doing so. The former en
tails appropriating the world, the other is to be alienated from
it. The former enables a sense of self and a sense of "we" to
be formed, the latter distorts the formation of character. Since
the ego (or the subject) is a relation to the surrounding world
(that is, to the non-ego or object), alienation with regard to the
world entails a corresponding alienation with regard to ego,
i.e., a weak sense of self. This is the effect of domination at
its most abstract. Society as a sociomaterial totality mediates
and gives concrete form to this domination, giving rise to large
sociomaterial totalities standing in more or less distinct rela
tions of contradiction to one another ? i.e., social classes and
class contradictions, wherein the possessing class is the ruling
class. This relation of domination gives the sociomatter a di
vided, tense, and strained aspect that can only be eliminated

75

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76 Essays by Dag 0sterberg

through a transformation whereby all members of society enjoy


each others' mutual recognition. Society ? this totality divided
within itself ? can and will become a totality in which everyone
affirms the others and the totality ? in other words, a classless
society ? through the establishment of a new form of property,
a new communal property.
I think this is an admissible interpretation of the basic idea
of Marx's historical materialism. As I indicated in my essay
"The Concept of Anomie and Historical Materialism," I con
sider historical materialism to be the best basis we have for
a sociological understanding, provided that we interpret Marx's
method and basic conception broadly enough. There are two
reasons for this proviso.
The first is that Marx's own writings and works, which range
over a period of almost 40 years, contain so many different
views tending in so many different directions that they can only
be fit together by conceiving of what we call Marxism or his
torical materialism within a broad framework. Recently the
French theoretician Louis Althusser tried to avoid such a broad
interpretation of Marx's works by attempting to demonstrate
that Marx's thought changed its outer skin, or in his terms,
underwent an epistemological break in about 1845-46, to then
go on to dismiss the works of the young Marx. But the Polish
theoretician Leszek Kolakowski's objections were devastating:
he pointed out, for example, that Althusser did not know, or at
least was compelled to pretend that he did not know, Marx's
Grundrisse, written about 1857, i.e., twelve years later. Alt
husser's fiasco strengthened the view that Marx's writings are
much too admissible of various interpretations to permit a
narrow interpretation, a distillate that would supposedly be the
pure theoretical essence of Marx's thought.
But one will perhaps object that this idolatry of Marx's books,
this biblicism as theologians call it, is a monstrosity in sociol
ogy. It is one thing to know what society is, and another to
know what Marx said. It is the first of these that we are concerned
with knowing; a knowledge of Marx's writings is exclusively a
means to further our knowledge of society, and not a goal in itself.

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D?rkheim's Collective Logic 77

Such a viewpoint, however, betrays little sociological under


standing of sociology. Sociology is itself a social institution,
a sociomaterial entity with inertia and a past. For sociology,
Marx is not just a deceased German-exile politician and the
oretician; his name is an intrinsic part of sociomatter, a part
of the mass of sociological knowledge, with tTmassTt meant in
its literal sense. Further, the views ascribed to Marx's name
will continue into the foreseeable future to be a part of the
common symbolic matrix, the common language which gives
sociology its unity, and makes the world of sociology a genuine
universe of thought and action and not, or not merely, a place
for "displaced persons" and mutual lack of comprehension.
The second reason for a broad interpretation of the concept
of historical materialism is that there is still quite a bit within
social life that eludes understanding from the standpoint of his
torical materialism. In some cases several standpoints are
current, while in others no standpoint has yet been developed
at all, so that it would hardly be reasonable to reject theories
from other traditions on the grounds that they were at variance
with historical materialism.
The theory of collective action is one such underdeveloped
or undeveloped domain of inquiry. There is surely something
strange about this. In social theory, Marx developed an idea
dear to the romantics (though, one could probably trace its roots
far back in time): In the beginning was the one, which became
two, and is striving to be united once again. Marx applies this
principle to history: In the beginning was community, primitive
communism, which broke down with private property, the most
recent evolutionary form of which is industrial capital, which
bears within it the seeds of its own destruction and points into
the future toward the new community, a communism of abun
dance. Nonetheless, little is to be found in Marx about the logic
of the collectivity. Marx is of course a communist, that is to
say, human community is assuredly his most vital concern. It
is just as certain that his main work, Capital, deals with the
direct opposite of community, namely, the logic of isolation and
atomization. In his theory of capital, Marx takes liberals at

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78 Essays by Dag 0sterberg

their word and carries the notion of self-interest to its logical


conclusion. In this heartless world, neither mother nor friend
is of any help, because neither family nor friendship is in any
way relevant to an understanding of the essence and movement
of capital. A human being is either wage laborer or owner of
capital, or a member of the family of one or the other, i.e., a
wife, child, etc. Further, both the wage laborer and the capi
talist, with their respective families, are to be seen as the
accoutrements of capital. The capitalist is the bearer and
character mask of his own capital, while the wage laborer is
productive and reproductive labor power, and furthermore is
only of interest to the capitalist in this respect. Further, all
are subject to the logic of the market, to competition, in which
each tries to underbid or overbid everyone else. This mode of
production is a distortion of community, insofar as atomization
is a degenerated manifestation of community. The undertone
of indignation and derision that we find in Marxfs somewhat
laborious presentation in three volumes, his controlled rage,
comes from the fact that capital distorts community among
men and creates the ideological veil called individualism: the
blind belief that human beings live for themselves, by their own
means, that there is such a thing as self-made men, and that
the sole reasonable way for human beings to behave is to use
one another as means.
Since historical materialism has so little to say about the
collective in its unencumbered form, it is not unreasonable to
ask whether DurkheimTs social theory might at least partly fill
up the vacuum, since he concentrates specifically on solidarity
and community.
But we should be clear from the outset that there is no ques
tion of incorporating the whole of DurkheimTs social theory en
bloc, because there are some blatantly evident contradictions
between Marx and D?rkheim. Marx was the would-be theoreti
cian of the proletarian revolution, while D?rkheim was society's
therapist, a sociotherapist, desirous of preventing men from
"plunging into revolutions," to use his own words. Whereas
Marx always took social conflict as his starting point, D?rkheim

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D?rkheim's Collective Logic 79

did not even discuss contradictions at any theoretical level.


Thus it may be ruled out from the start that anything more
than fragments of D?rkheim's sociology can be incorporated
into any social theory based on historical materialism.

2. D?rkheim's Theory of Punishment

One such fragment, however, could be Durkheim's theory of


punishment as defined in his book The Division of Labor in So
ciety and in some places in "Two Laws in Penal Development."
Let me recall the main features of this theory:
What we call punishment is an outburst of rage. He who is
punished, the offender, has done something that elicits rage.
Those who punish are usually specific organs, or authorities.
They do not, however, punish on their own behalf, but on behalf
of the entire society, the collective. Punishment is thus a col
lective phenomenon.
Further, this collective phenomenon has an intention or a
purpose, like every other action, but this intention usually ap
pears in disguised or encumbered form. It usually looks as if
its purpose is to deter the offender, or members of society in
general; punishment readily seems to be a preventive measure,
a deterrent and warning. Yet punishment does not work pre
ventively in this way, and in this respectpunishment fails to achieve
its effect. It is not senseless, however, because it has another
sense. It reinforces those who inflict the punishment in their
own obedience to the law. By giving expression to anger and
abhorrence at some misdeed, others are strengthened in their
resolve not to do likewise. This effect is further reinforced
by the fact that punishment is undertaken in community; the
outburst of indignation of one is reinforced by that of the others,
creating a collective rage, a phenomenon sui generis incom
parably more powerful than the indignation of the individual
alone. Punishment thus forges solid bonds between those who
punish; they aver their community and solidarity with one an
other. Punishment's 'true function is to maintain social co

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80 Essays by Dag 0sterberg

hesion intact, while maintaining all its vitality in the common


conscience... We can thus say without paradox that punishment
is above all designed to act upon upright people_tt1 But this
takes place in such a way that it appears as if it were society
itself, that unique entity, that was demanding revenge and atone
ment. Punishment thus appears in an illusory form, but, says
D?rkheim, it is a necessary illusion.

3. First Discussion

Seen as a relatively concrete description of punishment in a


society, for example our own, D?rkheimTs theory is totally in
compatible with historical materialism. Even though D?rkheim
believes that punishment is meted out in concreto by a partic
ular organ of society, and thus does not require punishment to
be imposed collectively, it is clear that he really does assume
that the penal authority expresses the collective. But in a so
ciety such as our own, the penal system is a part of the insti
tution of the state, which, according to Marx, is always the state
of a particular class, the ruling class; it is not the true expres
sion of the public good and public interests, but is instead a
false universality that speaks on behalf of the majority to fur
ther the interests of the minority.
This means that the legal system likewise is not a true and
forthright expression of the common weal. Justice is inevitably
class justice. This does not mean that every judgment handed
down or every punishment meted out benefits and favors the
ruling class, but that the legal system as a whole operates to
the advantage of that class. Legal sociology has in many re
spects borne out this view, so D?rkheim gets a minus on this
point.
The "we" that does the punishing, either collectively or on be
half of the collective, is thus not an unfalsified expression of
the collectivity, and from the concrete interpretation given by
historical materialism, DurkheimTs theory of the function of
punishment must hence be rejected.

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D?rkheim1 s Collective Logic 81

4. Second Discussion

But there is also a more abstract interpretation. Instead of


regarding Durkheim's "society" as what we would call a large
scale society, we can think of a group, i.e., an indefinite number
of people tied to one another by one or several mutual interests
or objectives. If we do this, DurkheimTs theory of punishment
at once gains plausibility and importance as far as historical
materialism is concerned. Historical materialism views the
struggle between social classes as the driving force of history,
i.e., as that which promotes the evolution of ever-higher modes
of production. While the social classes involved in this strug
gle may not appear as groups, it is in any case a main objective
of this theory that the class under domination should become a
group; the degree of organization and class consciousness re
flects the extent to which the class may be characterized as a
group.
In this context, solidarity, a key word for D?rkheim, can be
of utmost importance. The question arises therefore whether
Durkheim's theory of punishment is applicable to groups in
conflict with one another, in the sense that every group tries
to strengthen and consolidate its internal cohesion in D?rk
heim^ sense. When for example a socialist party expels one
of its members, or striking workers express their contempt
for strikebreakers, may we not understand such phenomena in
D?rkheim's sense ?
Looking at the logic in D?rkheim's theory more closely, we can
distinguish two aspects that are relevant to the present discussion.
1. Punishment as an expression of just indignation that a
law, a norm, etc. has been violated, manifested as a spontane
ous impulse to inflict pain on the deviant. In this way the de
viant atones for his deviance from the norm and from society.
2. Punishment as an act cementing the punishers more
closely together, i.e., strengthening cohesion within the group.
The first aspect stresses punishment's attribute of being a
response to lese majesty, i.e., that the crime violates some

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82 Essays by Dag 0sterberg

thing that is beyond the individual. The second aspect focuses


on how the individual is integrated into the group through his
participation in the punishment. Let us take up the second as
pect first. In what precisely does the alleged integrative effect
of punishment consist ? In that everyone who participates in
or approves of the punishment takes exception to the deviant
and withdraws his solidarity from him: "I am not like that, nor
do I want to be." The graver or more serious the crime, the
more the punishment tends toward the effect of expelling the
offender from his group of fellow men. The harsher the sen
tence or punishment, the more clear-cut the difference between
deviant and normative behavior, and the more emphatically are
the punishers reassured that they themselves are on the right
side. The logic in this would seem to be unimpeachable, as far
as it goes. But it is worthwhile considering a point that D?rk
heim leaves out, but which Sartre has probed in depth in an
other context.2 He portrays terror among confederates as
punishment in its most original form. Each and every one who
swears his allegiance to the group is saying essentially, or ul
timately, "I demand that I be killed if I cause dissension or
fail." Tales are told, for example, of German soldiers on the
Eastern front being shot by their fellow soldiers if they tried
to flee or duck. The principle of one for all and all for one is
applied here in the sense that each wants to secure himself
against his own and others1 failure or betrayal by setting up
this mutual threat, the import of which is that when one who
has failed is punished by the others, he is punished as every
man. The punishment thus does not just express disapproval
and the withdrawal of solidarity; it also reflects identification
with the deviant: he is myself in that he shows me a possibility
within myself which I must protect myself against by partici
pating in his punishment.
These reflections make clear that punishment does not only
strengthen solidarity within a group in the way that D?rkheim
describes it, that is, by my manifest moral disturbance or ab
horrence being strengthened by the others, whereby we are all
brought more closely together; I also have in a double sense

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D?rkheim's Collective Logic 83

made it more difficult for me to commit the same act of devi


ance as he to whose condemnation I have been party.
But all these considerations rest upon the hypothesis, or
more precisely, theorem, that aggression is the most common
consequence of frustration, i.e., that the frustration-aggression
relation is an understandable relation, and absolutely indispen
sable for an understanding of human behavior as a whole. There
are of course exceptions to this rule, as when the English peda
gogue A. S. Neill, at the Summerhill school, kept heaping gifts
on a thieving pupil until he stopped stealing. But this saintly
behavior is nothing upon which to build a social theory. Retain
ing the frustration-aggression theorem as our general premise,
we suggest that the assertion that punishment has an integrative
effect within a group reflects a general collective logic that his
torical materialism could assimilate, for example, in its theory
of contradictions among social classes.

5. Third Discussion

Now let us go back to the first aspect of punishment. Here


D?rkheim points out that an outburst of rage has a collective
quality in that the individual strikes the deviant on behalf of
something greater or more powerful than himself. This is the
esprit de corps which comes into force. Those who participate
in the punishment, we may assume, are outraged over the of
fense. tTHe has violated morals, God, the party, purest doctrine,
or the flag ? how shameful!"
These superindividual entities ? morals, the flag, etc. ? are
in a sense illusory, D?rkheim says, but he adds: a necessary
illusion. What this implies, it would seem, is that the esprit
de corps, the great "we," the collective, can only exist and ex
ercise its peculiar kind of power by virtue of a self-deception
of sorts on the part of each individual participant which does
not appear to derive from an exertion of willpower. The feeling
that the collective constitutes something different from our
selves, something exalted and of an essentially different nature,
is quite simply overwhelming. These collective feelings, says

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84 Essays by Dag 0sterberg

D?rkheim, "appear to us as an echo in us of a force which is


foreign to us, and which is superior to that which we are. We
are thus forced to project them outside ourselves, to attribute
what concerns them to some exterior object."3
We can now see where DurkheimTs analysis will conflict with
Marx's method: isn't this in fact a kind of fetishism he is de
scribing ? As we know, a fetish is an object that is believed to
possess a secret power and hence is adulated as something di
vine; it is this sense that Marx had in mind when he spoke
about the various forms of fetishism that the structure of capi
tal and wage labor produces, e.g., commodity fetishism, the
idolization of gold or interest-bearing wealth, etc. The theory
of fetishism is a part of his general theory of ideology, i.e.,
the maya-like veil concealing reality, which it is the task of
science to delineate, and the task of political activity to tear
asunder.
But when D?rkheim writes about the superindividual nature
of punishment as a necessary and indispensable illusion, it is
hard to avoid interpreting this to mean that punishment will al
ways have this quality. He writes, for example: "Shall we say
that the error [i.e., the illusion] will dissipate itself as soon as
men are conscious of it ? But we ... know that the sun is an im
mense globe; [still] we see it only as a disc of a few inches."4
This argument, which is taken from Descartes and classical
philosophy, is enticing, and has an outward similarity with the
famous section in Capital Vol. I, Chapter 1, where Marx writes
about commodity fetishism, saying that a scientific demonstra
tion of fetishism is not in itself enough to abolish it. The con
ception of economic value transforms, he says, "every product
of labor into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, men try to de
cipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of their own
social product_" When science succeeded in interpreting
the hieroglyphic, he says later on, this "marks an epoch in the
history of mankind's development, but by no means banishes
the semblance of objectivity possessed by the social charac
teristics of labor."5 Regarding such forms as money, which
Marx calls "the finished form of the world of commodities,"
he says:

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D?rkheim's Collective Logic 85

The categories of bourgeois economics consist precisely of forms of this


kind. They are forms of thought which are socially valid, and therefore ob
jective, for the relations of production belonging to this historically deter
mined mode of social production, i.e. commodity production. The whole
mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the
products of labor on the basis of commodity production, vanishes therefore
as soon as we come to other forms of production.6

In other words, the fetishism in this kind of economy is not


absolutely necessary. The illusions are not unconditional and
indispensable; they can be dispelled. Not ? and here D?rk
heim is correct ? simply in people's becoming aware of them,
but through changes in the sociomaterial circumstances and
conditions on which the production of illusions is based.
The parallel between D?rkheim and Marx on this point is
therefore only apparent, since Durkheim's theory of punishment
in the respect relevant here requires collective life always to
have the quality of a hieroglyph, an illusion or fetishism.

6. Durkheim's Theory of Rituals and Marx's Notion


of a Demystified Economy

We can now fruitfully carry this discussion further on a more


general level. It is of course readily apparent that Durkheim's
theory of punishment as a collective phenomenon is a special
case of his general theory of ritual as it is presented in his
book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. In it, D?rk
heim maintains that the significance of religions lies mainly in
their ritual prescriptions, ceremonies, prayers, etc. The vari
ous rites all have the effect, the "function," of binding the faith
ful closer together, strengthening the cohesion of the group.
The outward focus or object of rituals, whether it is a holy
stone, a totem animal, a mystery god or a deus absconditus, is
in each case a symbol for the group as such.
Let me here draw a distinction between a sign and a symbol.
For example, the number 4 is a sign, while a lily, e.g., the one
on the boy scout emblem, is a symbol. The number 4 refers di
rectly to the concept of the number 4. A lily, on the other hand,

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86 Essays by Dag 0sterberg

as a symbol of purity, does not have this direct ostensive prop


erty. When the materiality of the sign itself is the object of the
thought, the sign becomes a symbol. A symbol thereby acquires
something of the inscrutable about it.
The objects of religions ? divinities, and so forth ? are al
ways symbolized, according to D?rkheim, by material symbols.
Rituals are therefore performed in association with or regard
to material symbols or symbolisms that symbolize the group's
internal unity, cohesiveness, and strength. Punishment seen as
a ritual also has a ritual symbolic quality, and rituals, accord
ing to D?rkheim, generally project relations among men onto a
symbolic plane where they function as an ineluctable collective
illusion.
An opponent of D?rkheim noted before the Second World War
that Nuremburg was Durkheimism in practice, referring to the
Nazis' ritual processions with banners and a vast array of em
blems, through which the German nation was supposed to be
forged together and given new inspiration. This intentional
pompous myth-creation is undeniably one way in which D?rk
heim's theory of rituals could be implemented, although German
National Socialism would certainly have been alien to D?rk
heim. Yet this extreme application of the theory of rituals is
well designed to bring out that touch of irrationality attached
to Durkheim's view of the collectivity, an irrationality which is
irreconcilable with the basic ideas of historical materialism.
What I should like to insist on is a view which perhaps was
never explicitly stated by Marx, but which seems to me to be
the keystone of the entire structure of Capital: namely, that the
higher mode of production which can and must supplant capital
ism will be both a more collective and a more rational (in the
sense of transparent) mode of production. Indeed, in Capital,
and especially in the third volume, the mode of production that
presupposes wage labor and capital as its basic structure, i.e.,
capitalism, is made up of layer after layer of ever more mys
tified, fetishized relations, of veil after veil. The value-creat
ing labor is wrapped in shrouds which are further wrapped,
etc., so that in the end what appears to us as the visible outer

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D?rkheim's Collective Logic 87

face of capitalism is but sham and tinsel of every sort; the un


fathomable world of the stock speculator and the rentier, the
flood of money, the difference between poor and rich, between
booms and depressions ? a world of unreality, a rather sad kind of
carnival, if one will. Marx's Capital divests capital of all these
shrouds; one layer after another is shown for what it is, and
the concept of a rational economy, and hence a rational society,
begins to take shape ? a world in which a spade is called a
spade, where a use-object is a use-object, where labor appears
as labor, and where Butler's statement that "everything is what
it is and not something else" holds. Such an economy, crystal
clear, thus creates the basis for a corresponding demystified
social life in general, which in the end is the same as saying:
a social life where all symbolism falls away as irrational and
superfluous and where ideology will be a thing of the past, and
hence where the ideological mist enshrouding punishment will
have been dispelled as well.

7. Summary

Let me now close by summing up our argument as follows:


Historical materialism takes as its starting premise that so
ciety is a unity of contradictions, while Durkheim's theory of
society is premised on a view of society as a primal state of
community. These two basic premises are irreconcilable. But
historical materialism further assumes that there is a more
or less open and declared struggle taking place at all times be
tween social classes, and that solidarity belongs to the logic
of this struggle. Here is where Durkheim's theory of solidarity
comes into the picture. His theory of punishment, as a special
case of his collective logic, is a theory of the place of violence
in social life. This theory can be incorporated into historical
materialism's conceptual framework provided it is reinter
preted and modified somewhat, as by Sartre when he discusses
the logic of terror. Punishment, violence, and terror have an
indisputable integrative function for a group engaged in strug
gle. On the other hand, Durkheim's theory of punishment has

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88 Essays by Dag 0sterberg

another aspect which is repugnant to historical materialism,


to wit, his claim that the exercise of punishment has inevitably
something illusory about it, inasmuch as it claims to be prac
ticed on behalf of something other than men themselves,
namely, society or a symbol of society. So it turns out that
Durkheim's theory of punishment is a special case of his gen
eral theory of rituals, according to which social life has an in
eluctable symbolic quality for its participants. Yet it is just
this claim which clashes with historical materialism's basic
idea of a society without ideology, a society that is understand
able throughout for its members. Durkheim's theory is there
fore ? for the purposes of historical materialism ? not ra
tional enough; it takes a certain inscrutability, incomprehensi
bility, a certain fetishism in social life, as given and with us
for all time. At a lower theoretical level, historical material
ism can profitably incorporate Durkheim's perceptions at both
the theoretical and practical planes. Indeed, we cannot see the
end of ideology, symbolisms, and the time of emblems in social
life; D?rkheim thus describes and interprets social life cor
rectly, the way it really is. Historical materialism must, on
its own premises, consider social life as it is in the light, to
be sure, of what it is not, but can and must be. My conclusion
is analagous to the one I drew from my comparison of the con
cept of anomie with historical materialism. At a certain level
of social life, existence seems anomic to its participants, and
the struggle against anomie may be among the most urgent
calls of today's life. The struggle against anomie is not, how
ever, the deepest concern of historical materialism, and sim
ilarly, a society in which punishment is meted out as prescribed
in Durkheim's theory of punishment is not historical material
ism's goal for the future.
(1974)
Notes

1. Emile D?rkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George


Simpson (New York: The Free Press, 1964), p. 108.
2. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. Alan Sheridan
Smith (London: New Left Books, 1976), Book II.

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Durkheim's Collective Logic 89

3. D?rkheim, p. 100.
4. Ibid., p. 101.
5. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans.
Ben Fowkes (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. 167.
6. Ibid., p. 169.

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