The Politics of the Future

Durkheim comments on the economic issues of France in the nineteenth century. Under the old regime, he cites that there was a fully defined economic organization, in harmony with the state of commerce and industry at the time. Yet, from the beginning of the nineteenth century, this statement was very much attacked. Some great minds realized that economic life could not go to such an extent against the fundamental conditions of life in general, that it could not be made up of anarchic, discordant movements, from which order and harmony were were born miraculously, but that economic life pre-supposes an 'organization'. However, he expresses that based on this social doctrines, all are in agreement on this fundamental truth, that economic activity is something eminently social, that it is concerned with social ends, with social interests, and that, accordingly, it needs to be socially organized.