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1). MARX ON CONFLICT. Marx is right, capitalist society is inherantly conflictual.
1). DURKHEIM ON ORDER. Durkheim is right, even if it could be made more efficient and just, industrial and now postindustrial society is basically orderly.
2). MARX ON ALIENATION. Marx is right. Capitalism fundamentally alienates us from our "species-being", our true potential as free producers, to make of ourselves what we will.
2). DURKHEIM ON EGOISM AND ANOMIE. Durkheim is right. The best concepts for analysing the problem of the individual in modern society are egoism - excessive market individualism - and anomie - the state of normlessness we encounter in unprecedented situations.
3). MARX ON THE STATE. Marx is right. The State (government in all its manifestations) is essentially a tool of Capital and is run by and for the upper class.
3). DURKHEIM ON THE STATE. Durkheim is right. In industrial society, government must perform the job of socializing citizens into the "collective conscience". It must of course see to it that business is happy, but its function for society is over and above that of the capitalist class.
4). MARX ON THE INDIVIDUAL. Marx is rght. Individuality in capitalist society is essentially a bourgeois illusion. The most important fact about any one of us is our occupation - how we have been trained to service Capital.
4). DURKHEIM ON THE INDIVIDUAL. Durkheim is right. The individual is a product of successful socialization into the collective conscience of society of his or her community.
5). MARX ON CAPITALISM AS MACHINE. Marx is right. We are like cogs in a machine over which we have no control. Capitalist society consumes people as raw material and churns out the only finished product that matters - profit.
5). DURKHEIM ON INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AS AN ORGANISM. Durkheim is right. Society is like a vast living organism with its own consciousness. The organic analogy is the most fruitful way of thinking about the complexity of modern society.
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