Communism, Socialism, Socialists... Sociology?

Auguste Comte (1798-1857)

The industrial revolution is on my mind.  With the world changing during the 18th and 19th centuries, like was mentioned in my class, "the world was ripe for new social ideas."  Many of those social ideas came from people like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.  Not only was this a time period of new social thought but it was a time for study social thought.  Not only was Marx a socialist, he was a sociologist, but not the first.


Auguste Comte, the father of sociology, (he actually coined the word), was Marx's predecessor by about 20 years.  According to Comte, every society passed through three stages of development: religious, metaphysical, and scientific.  The first stage, religious, is when a society believes that supernatural forces control the world.  The next, metaphysical stage, a society turns to the idea of "fate" governing all affairs.  Finally in the third stage, the scientific stage, a society moves beyond superstition and explains things through observation, experimentation, and the scientific method.  At least for what it was worth, Comte did a great good at explaining what had happened to the society around him around the time he was alive (1798-1857).

Also when discussing the industrial revolution in class Prof. Burton mentioned the idea of "solidarity."  Here comes another sociologist: Emile Durkheim.  First of all...  Solidarity, noun (säləˈde(ə)ritē) unity of feeling or action.  It has to to with how much a person feels connected to society.  In the industrial revolution people there were many people who feel a big disconnect because they no longer were in control of the means of production.  Durkheim studied solidarity in the context of suicides.  He concluded that too much or too little integration or solidarity with society as well as too much or too little regulation by society could cause a person to commit suicide.  For example, Durkheim described some suicides as being "egoistic" meaning that the individual killed him/herself because they did not feel connected enough to the group.

Suggestions to the reader:

• Add some more flavor to your reading by looking up what sociologists have to say about historical time periods
• Ask yourself, what is the line between being too integrated into society and being too free of society?
• Additional fun industrial age stuff:  I went to this museum about the flour mills in Minneapolis.  It is just another example of the mass production factories of that era.