Alienation vs Anomie
In studying their relationship to religion, Marx's alienation and Durkheim's anomie both have important roles. Neither Marx nor Durkheim came up with these terms while directly studying religion, but rather they coined these terms in the midst of other sociological studies. Marx, who was a materialist, believed that the economic market had an invisible had that controlled every other aspect of human life. Your relationship to the market was either that you controlled the means of productions or you didn't, which meant you had to gain access to them in other ways, usually selling your labor. From this new labor market that became instinctive with the installation of capitalism, Marx constructed
So, through religion man has created a 'reversed-world consciousness. "The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself," stated Marx. It is actually the best school for teaching self-restraint. "The less limited one feels, the more intolerable all limitation appears. With these morals, the individuals can maintain a fulfilling life thus avoiding Durkheim's state of anomie. ' Similarly, Durkheim developed his theories of anomie is the study of social solidarity. He believed that anomie was the deterioration of moral restraint which occurs in industrial society when the division of labor fails to produce social solidarity and when the regulatory restraints of society are unable to set limits on social wants so that needs begin to exceed the means to attain them, and disappointment and despair follow. Religion is used as a means to stop the liminal state of anomie but at the same time religion is refusing man from his human essence. According to Durkheim, religion has been successful because it creates and imposes morals and values on groups of people. "- Durkheim's Suicide: A Study in Sociology) Interestingly, when these two aspects are put together one can see that Durkheim takes a positive approach towards religion whereas Marx believes that religion is innately wrong. Briefly, Marx believed that by selling your labor, you are alienating yourself from what you produce, from your productive activity, from your fellow human beings, and finally from the humans species all together. Forcing us to constant self-discipline, it prepares us to accept collective discipline with equanimity, while wealth, exalting the individual, may always arouse the spirit of rebellion which is the very source of immorality [. When Durkheim spoke of anomie in the aspect of religion he referred to religion as a sort of shield against the state of anomie.
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