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- Title
Durkheimianism and political alienation: Durkheim and Marx.
- Authors
Gabel, Joseph
- Abstract
The purpose of this article is to show that the theories of the French sociological school -- including the research of Durkheim and his followers, as well as those of L. Lévy-Bruhl -- though obsolete in the eyes of enthnologists, may prove instrumental in unmasking a phenomenon of contemporary political life which did not exist in Durkheim's lifetime: the totalitarian mentality. Durkheimism was one of the ideologies of the pluralistic, nineteenth-century French democracy. The rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century has given this theory the further value of demystification (deideologization). In conclusion, the author insists on the analogies which exist between the sociologies of Marx and Durkheim: Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life is in fact an essay on religious alienation. From the author's viewpoint, "Durkheimianism" is a true "bourgeois Marxism."
- Subjects
DURKHEIMIAN school of sociology; POLITICAL alienation; POLITICAL psychology; PLURALISM; TOTALITARIANISM; COMMUNISM
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 1984, Vol 9, Issue 2, p179
- ISSN
0318-6431
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/3340213