Durkheim, Veblen's cousin

There are some wonderful discoveries I made recently, while re-reading Le Suicide. I think most of Chapter 5 merits the insertion into a Social Class course. I am surprised it isn't discussed more in detail when it comes to social class discussion. The talk of division of labor, although completely legitimate, is not the sole contribution made by Durkheim to the entire social class conversation. There is his discussion of anomie, too.

The definition detour: anomie - a social condition under which all known social norms break down and become irrelevant and/or inapplicable.

Before launching into the discussion of anomie in more detail, Durkheim spends some time talking about consumption. Here is what he says: “No living person can be happy or even live at all unless his needs are sufficiently well adjusted to his means. In other words, if he demands more than can be provided to him, or even something other than can be provided, he will be constantly irritated and unable to function without suffering” (p. 269)

In touch with unknown Puritanical roots, Durkheim believes that it is the people themselves, the individuals, who cannot constrain their desires to consume on their own. “There is no society in which they [desires] have been satisfied to an equal extent in the different degrees of social hierarchy. However, in its essentials, human nature is very much the same in all its citizens. So, it is not human nature that can set the variable limits to these needs that they demand. Consequently, to the extent that they depend solely on the individual, they are limitless. In itself, setting aside any external power that governs it, our sensibility is a bottomless abyss that nothing can fill.” (p. 270)

“So the more one has, the more one wants to have, the satisfaction one receives only serving to stimulate needs instead of fulfilling them.” Durkheim argues that under the conditions where all external constraints to desire are obliterated, a disruption in the pursuit of satisfaction could cause anxiety and lead to suicide. “For things to be otherwise, it is all above necessary that passions should be limited. Only then can they be harmonized with the faculties and then satisfied.” (p. 271-271)