The Constraint of Justice: Durkheim on Modern Solidarity and Freedom as Non-exploitation

Through a parallel historical-conceptual reading of The Rules of Sociological Method and of The Division of Social Labor, the article shows that Durkheim’s central epistemological tool, “constraint”, besides having a descriptive function, also aimed to endow sociology with an explanatory and critical power. In addition to opening up the field of investigations, “constraint” had to guide the historical and political exploration of the modern division of labor, marked by an absence of justice that made solidarity weak and troubled, as revealed by the rise of social antagonism. The article highlights the extent to which, behind the opposition between the normal and the pathological, lied a quest for justice, expressed by workers’ aspirations, in which the idea of freedom was itself at stake. Far from having inaugurated sociology to curb socialism, Durkheim conceived it rather as its reflexive theoretical correlate, charged with the conceptual and empirical means to realize its political ambition: to transform modern society as a whole, thanks to those institutions that had to achieve modern solidarity by overthrowing capitalist exploitation through democratic participation.