The Dehumanization of Anomie and Alienation: A Problem in the Ideology of Sociology

Author(s): John Horton

Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Dec., 1964), pp. 283-300
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 THE DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE
AND ALIENATION: A PROBLEM IN
THE IDEOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGY

John Horton
SUMMARY

ONTEMPORARY DEFINITIONS of anomie and aliena-

tion have confused, obscured, and changed the classical mean-
ings of these concepts. Alienation for Marx and anomie for
Durkheim were metaphors for a radical attack on the dominant
institutions and values of industrial society. They attacked similar
behaviour, but from opposing perspectives. Marx assumed an im-
manent conception of the relationship between man and society and
the value of freedom from constraint; Durkheim, a transcendental
conception and the value of moral constraint. Marx was interested in
problems of power and change, Durkheim in problems of the main-
tenance of order. Paradoxically, contemporarydefinitions accept what
was most problematic for these classical theorists-the dominant in-
stitutions of society. I raise the question: are contemporary definitions
of alienation and anomie actually value-free, or are we witnessing a
transformationfrom radical to conformistdefinitions and values under
the guise of value-free sociology?

One of the mysteries of contemporary American sociology is the

disappearance of the sociologist. His respondents speak, the social
system functions loudly, but he who gave respondentslanguage and the
social system life is obscured beneath a fog of editorial 'we,' 'they', or
'it'. His magic rests not only on the clever use of language but also on
the ideology of the end of ideology and on an elaborate mythology
starring Max Weber as sociological hero. Incanting an Americanized
version of Max Weber's logic-there is after all a real distinction be-
tween fact and value-the sociological magician accepts and justifies
as a universal tenet of scientificobjectivity his division into professional
scientist and political animal. Perhaps I would be unsociological to
suggest that he could do otherwise; this is not a conscious and intended
self-deception. He is only affirmingin theory what he does in practice;
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 JOHN HORTON
divided and alienated in his work, he is alienated in his thinking about
his work.
Alienated thinking is especially apparent when the sociologist thinks
about alienation. In the works of Marx and Durkheim, alienation and
anomie critically and negatively describe states of social disorderfrom
utopian standardsof societal or human health. Today dehumanization
has set in, the concepts have been transmogrified into things instead
of evaluations about things, and it is no longer clear what alienated
men are alienated from.1 The intellectual problem of dehumaniza-
tion is how to make an evaluation of a discontent pass for an objective
description, or at least for another's evaluation.
Some would argue that values have indeed been done away with,
and in the name of objective sociology. I would argue that such a
position is the epitome of alienated and unsociological thinking. In
sociological fact, time and sociologists have changed or obscured the
classical meanings and values of alienation and anomie, and have
added new ones. Under the banner of progresstowards a more objec-
tive science, there has been a movement from radical to conformist
values (or perhaps a movement towards value relativism), from anti-
middle-class to middle-classvalues.
The sociological transformation of alienation and anomie would
make a lively chapter in the much avoided sociology of sociology, for
the differencesin classicaland contemporarydefinitionsshow how much
sociological thought is affected by the particular historical position of
the sociologist. But the chapter is only begun here: In this paper I
shall attempt first to clarify the radically differentvalues which gave the
classical definitions of Marx and Durkheim their significancefor social
research and social action. Secondly, I shall outline differences be-
tween these and the contemporary definitions of Melvin Seeman and
Robert K. Merton.
The task of defining and comparing definitions and values is not
purely ideological. Sociological clues to the history of transformation
can be found in the changing social position and organization of socio-
logy-in the middle position of the modern sociologist, in the in-
creasingly specialized nature of his occupational roles, and in his
language which expresseshis occupational and class position.
Finally, throughout the discussion, I shall raise more general and
disputable questions for sociological thinking about sociology. If our
concepts have changed, and if these changes reflect changes in the
questions we ask (ideology) as well as changes in how well we ask them
(methodology), then we must rethink the implications of what should
be most obvious to the sociologist-his knowledge is propositional,per-
spectivistic, and relational. Karl Mannheim has stated it much better:
'Reality is discovered in the way in which it appears to the subject in
the course of his self-extension.'la The social history of alienation and
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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION

anomie is a history of different ideologies, different types of self-exten-

sion, different and socially conditioned approaches to the problem of
social discontent.

ALIENATION AND ANOMIE AS RADICAL CONCEPTS: THE TRADITION

OF MARX AND DURKHEIM

A first step in the ideological analysis of anomie and alienation is an

examination of their classicalmeanings in the worksof Marx and Durk-
heim. The discussionwill be organized around several contentions:
(I) Classical definitions of anomie and alienation contain radical
ethical and political directives. The concepts are ethically grounded
metaphors for an attack on the economic and political organization of
the European industrial middle classes. Paradoxically, alienation and
anomie are used today by the successorsof the very classes which the
classical concepts attacked.
(2) Classical definitions of anomie and alienation contain different
ideologies; they are counter-conceptswith differentdirectivesfor action;
they describe essentially the same behaviour and discontents, but from
polar opposite perspectives, which look for different causes and call
for different remedies.
(3) These opposed perspectivesfollow from different interests in the
social process,values, and assumptionsabout the relation between man
and society.
Consideredoutside of any particular historical context, anomie refers
to the problems of social control in a social system. Cultural constraints
are ineffective: values are conflicting or absent, goals are not adjusted
to opportunity structuresor viceversa,or individuals are not adequately
socialized to cultural directives. Whatever the particular meanings,
anomie is a social state of normlessnessor anarchy; the concept always
focuses on the relationship between individuals and the constraining
forces of social control. Durkheim used rates of deviation and the state
of law and punishment as behavioural indices of anomie. Although he
avoids psychological definitions, he implies that egotism, insatiable
striving, meaninglessness,and aimlessnesswould be the probable reac-
tions to living in an anomic society.
Alienation represents less a problem of the adequacy of social con-
trol than the legitimacy of social control; it is a problem of power de-
fined as domination, a concept conspicuously absent from the anomie
perspective. Anomie concentrates on culture or culture transmitted in
social organization; alienation on the hierarchy of control in the
organization itself. The critical focus of alienation is on whatever social
conditions separate the individual from society as an extension of self
through self activity, rather than as an abstract entity independent of
individual selves. For Marx, alienation from society is a priori alienation
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 JOHN HORTON
from self. Anomie concentrates on barriers to the orderly functioning
of society; alienation on barriersto the productivegrowth of individuals,
and by extension, barriersto the adaptive change of the social system.
The non-alienated condition is not necessarilysocial harmony as social
control, but social harmony as the spontaneous result of individuals
being free to realize their historical potentialities. Free means auto-
nomous and self-determining,not controlled by external forces.Alien-
ated persons are powerless and estranged from the reified creations of
their own self (social) activity.
In the worksof Marx and Durkheim, there are no simple operational
definitions of alienation or anomie on either a purely psychological or
sociological level. The concepts imply complete social theories ex-
plaining relationships between a social condition and behaviour.
Critical concepts, they also imply the judgment of society in terms of
ideal, or at least future and unrealized standards.
When alienation and anomie are returned to the concrete historical
conditions which gave them their significance for social action, it be-
comes apparent that they representradical criticismsof specifichistori-
cal situations. Neither Durkheim nor Marx was interested in abstract
historical and psychological definitions of anomie and alienation. This
observation cannot be over-emphasized because it is precisely the
original radical, historical, and sociological content which has been
removed or altered by contemporarydefinitions.
The classical definitions have in common their condemnation of
economic individualism and its rationalization in the middle-class
doctrines of economic and political liberalism. These were interpreted
as expressions of thinking under anomic and alienating conditions.
Marx and Durkheim critically describe societies in which economic
self-interesthas been reified and raised to the level of a collective end.
The consequences, they agreed, were that economic activities and
values had become separated from and commanding over all other
spheres of collective life. The most intense social activity in modern
industrial societies, economic activity, was the least social.
In Suicide,Durkheim writes that anomie is endemic in modern
economic life. By this he means that the economy, traditionally re-
strained by the moral codes of church, state, or guild, now dominates
as the realm of unrestrained self-interest, or even class interest. For-
merly a means to, and a means limited by other ends, economic activity
had become an end in itself. In other words, anomie has become in-
stitutionalized.
These dispositions(self-interestedstriving toward indefinitegoals) are so
inbred that society has grown to accept them and is accustomed to think them
normal. It is everlastingly repeated that it is man's nature to be eternally
dissatisfied, constantly to advance, without relief or rest, toward an indefinite
goal. The longing for infinity is daily represented as a mark of moral dis-
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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION

tinction, whereas it can only appear within unregulated consciences which

elevate to a rule the lack of rule from which they suffer.2
From a different perspective, Marx makes a similar observation in
his Economicand PhilosophicManuscripts. Here he argues that self-interest
appears to be the motivating force of society because man has been
alienated from his human and social activity, labour. The doctrine of
self-interest is an example of alienated thinking.
Since alienated labor: (I) alienates nature from man; and (2) alienates man
from himself, from his own active function, his life activity; so it alienates
him from the species. It makes species-lifeinto a means of individual life. In
the first place it alienates species-life and individual life, and secondly, it
turns the latter, as an abstraction, into the purpose of the former, also in its
abstract and alienated form.3

THE SOCIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF RADICALISM

A radical criticism cannot be derived from description of facts

alone; it rests on standards which transcend them. In nineteenth-
century Europe, where the middle-class ethic of self-interest was justi-
fied by an essentially psychological and atomistic interpretation of man
and society, one source of radicalism was sociology itself. Marx and
Durkheim made their criticism of the self-interest ethic and the con-
tractual interpretation of society in the name of history and sociology.
The radicalism of their concepts comes in part from a sociological and
collectivistic definition of man. This is their counter to the psychological
and individualistic images of man and society, which they saw as ex-
pressions of alienated and anomic life conditions. By definition their
respective social images of man mean that history could not be ex-
plained with reference to what individuals think and that events are
not necessarily, and certainly not ideally, the result of a universal self-
interest drive. Even Durkheim has acknowledged his agreement with
Marxists on this point.
We believe fruitful this idea that social life should be explained not by the
conception which the participants have of it, but by the fundamental causes
which escape their consciousness; and we think also that these causes ought to
be sought principally in the way in which associated individuals are grouped.
It is only on this condition that history can become a science and sociology,
consequently, exist.4
Durkheim never tires of telling his reader that sociological facts must
be explained sociologically. As Parsons suggests, his argument is both
formal and empirical.5 The formal, logical argument rests on the
assumption that society, being qualitatively different from its parts,
cannot be explained only with reference to the characteristics of its
parts. The empirical and sociological argument emerges in Durk-
heim's explanation of order and anomie, and in his attack on all who
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 JOHN HORTON
would explain and reform society with a psychological and atomistic
definition of man.
In The Division of Labor,Durkheim questions Spencer's psychological
concept of man and society when he asks essentially how can we explain
order and co-operation, if man, whose dispositions are not universally
the same, acted only out of their different and opposing definitions
of self-interest. He also makes a sociological and collectivistic criticism
of what he understood to be socialism. Socialism, he argued, was
basically as anarchistic in result as classical liberalism. Both fail to
recognize the need for social control over individual and economic
activities.
Because riches will not be transmitted any longer as they are today does not
mean that the state of anarchy will disappear, for it is not a question as to the
regulations of activity to which these riches give rise. It will not regulate
itself by magic, as soon as it is useful, if the necessary forces for the con-
stitution of this regulation have not been aroused and organized.7

Thus, Durkheim believed that the reification of self-interest was a

contradiction of man's social nature, which required constraint through
social control. Marx, on the other hand, contended that any reification
of man's activity and products contradicted human nature, which
developed fully only in the absence of reification and constraint. Far
from being the natural disposition of man, whose dispositions are his-
torically relative, the doctrine of the pursuit of self-interest was the
propaganda of the capitalist ruling class, the ideological expression of
class society and the alienating division of labour.
The critical content of alienation and anomie is sociological in the
sense that Marx and Durkheim examined relationships between in-
dividuals and the collectivities which are products of their activity
rather than psychological characteristics of individuals. Neither soci-
ologist studied man outside of the subject-object (man-society) rela-
tionship; both condemned any attempt to do so. As sociologists they
agreed that any doctrine which conceives of society as a congeries of
contractual relationships between self-seeking individuals is false in its
denial of the social nature of man. At the very most, such doctrines
universalize the particular and transitory conditions of nineteenth-
century industrial society.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOURCES OF RADICALISM: ANOMIE AND ALIENA-

TION AS TRANSCENDENT AND IMMANENT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAN AND SOCIETY

If Marx and Durkheim distinguish themselves as sociologists by

interpreting man as a social relationship, they nevertheless are in com-
plete disagreement on the precise nature of this relationship. Indeed,
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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION
alienation and anomie are founded on opposite conceptions of man and
society. The opposed conceptions parallel those used in theology to
describe the relationship between man and God. God is transcendent
if he is exalted above man and the world by his moral perfection. God is
immanent when he dwells in the world, when he is the essence of the
world and the world the essence of him. Similarly, society can be in-
terpreted transcendentally and extrinsically as an entity different from
and morally superior to individual men; or it can be interpreted
immanently as the extension of men, the indwelling of men. Aliena-
tion assumes an immanent interpretation of man and society; anomie a
transcendent one. Both interpretations provide an ethical basis for a
radical criticism of society.
Anomie is basically a utopian concept of the political right; it
criticizes traditional economic liberalism of the middle classes from a
philosophical position which could be called naturalistic transcen-
dentalism. It carries radical rightest implications as it derives from the
philosophical positivism of Comte who founded his critique of the social
organization of the rising middle classes on an analysis of the form of
social control in the ancien regime."
Alienation is a utopian concept of the radical left; it attacks economic
liberalism from the futuristic perspective of the deprived classes and
not from the backward glances of a declining class. The concept is
formulated within a tradition of naturalistic and historical immanence;
it represents an attempt to put the ideas of German idealism and the
Enlightenment within a tradition of scientific and historical research.
Marx stressed the human and the active side of the man-society
relationship and ultimately denied the dualism of man-society. Man's
human and social activity is labour, and the products of labour, in-
cluding society, are the extensions of man's own nature. Thus, man is
his activity, his objects, man is society. Any reification of men's objects,
any transcendence of men's products over men so that they do not see
their interests, powers, and abilities affirmed and expressed therein,
is evidence of the alienation of man from his self-activity, his objects,
and himself. The whole notion of social alienation presupposes this
immanent conception of human nature. Alienation is an historical
state which will ultimately be overcome as man approaches freedom.
Freedom for Marx, as well as for Hegel, meant autonomous and self-
contained existence. Men will be free when the world has become so
humanized and free of exploitation that man and society are one in
theory and in practice. Marx's work could be interpreted as an em-
pirical analysis of the historical process wherein man becomes separated
from and reunited with society as self.
Preoccupied with the nature of order rather than change, Durkheim
emphasized the passive side of the man-society relationship, how
society makes and constrains men. His definition of anomie with its
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 JOHN HORTON
focus on the problems of social control and morality presupposes an
absolute and eternal distinction between man and society and a dualis-
tic conception of human nature. Marx's man is homolaborans,an histor-
ical variable developing through his own self-activity. But Durkheim's
man is homo duplex, part egoistic, anarchistic and self seeking, part
moral in so far as he is regulated and constrained by society, which is
the source of all logic and morality.9 The object of men's orientation,
society, being collective and outliving the life of individual men, is
transcendent, qualitatively different from the parts which compose it.
Durkheim's transcendence is in part a logical extension of his socio-
logical and relativistic interpretation of man. If man's nature is plastic
and therefore without a system of inner direction and control, then the
needed control system must be external. Society is the source of order
and control since it is analytically, and, Durkheim apparently believed,
actually independent of individual man. The transcendence like the
immanence argument, with its value of freedom as a condition of
growth, is also an ethical argument. Influenced by Kant, Durkheim
contended that morality is motivated not by self-interest, but by dis-
interest; men conform to rule out of feeling of obligation and duty in the
face of a superior entity. Anomie is thus a state of amorality and anarchy
which can be overcome only by establishing societal rules. Freedom for
Durkheim does not end with constraint; freedom begins with con-
straint over the conflicting passions of man. Alienation, as the tran-
scendence of society over particular men, is the condition of morality.
The immanence ideology of alienation and the transcendence ideo-
logy of anomie reveal themselves also in Marx's and Durkheim's respec-
tive criticisms of the self-interest ethic and in their programmes for
social change. The concepts describe similar historical phenomena, but
in sharply contrasting ways with radically different implications for
action. For Marx, the doctrine of self-interest is one indication of
alienation, self-estrangement and powerlessness in a class society. For
the transcendentalist Durkheim, the same thing indicates anomie, a
problem of inadequate rather than illegitimate social control. An
immanent and materialist reform requires that alienation be overcome
through revolutionary practice to end class society and to establish the
material base for freedom in productive activities. But: 'It is above all
necessary to avoid postulating "society" once more as an abstraction
confronting man.'"0
Marx wanted to humanize society, to organize the actual world so
that man-could experience himself as man (free and autonomous in
his human or productive activity). Durkheim proposed to humanize
Hobbesian man through the extension of social control. He called for
the re-establishment of morality in a way which would take into
account, not abolish, the specialized division of labour in society.
Durkheim's specific proposal was the establishment of occupational
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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION

communities which would be the modern carriers of moral discipline

and social control.
For anomie to end, there must exist, or be formed, a group which can con-
stitute the system of rules actually needed." The problem must be put this
way: to discover through science the moral restraint which can regulate
economic life, and by its regulation control selfishness and thus gratify
needs. 12

THE CONTINUATION OF IMMANENT AND TRANSCENDENT SOCIOLOGY

Immanent and transcendent interpretations of social problems are

of more than historical interest; they continue to oppose each other in
contemporary American sociology. The opposition also continues to
parallel different interests in the social process. Contemporary func-
tionalists, interested in order and society as the unit of analysis, favour
the transcendent (Durkheimian) interpretation of society. Those inter-
ested in process, change, and major social reform naturally emphasize
the immanent nature of society. Talcott Parsons probably comes closest
to Durkheim in asserting the functional need for transcendent social
control. His position is nowhere clearer than when he is criticizing
C. W. Mills, who has approached a self-styled immanent interpreta-
tion of man and society. In a review of Mills' The Power Elite, Parsons
shows himself less critical of Mills' facts about power than of his inter-
pretation of facts, his immanent ideology. As a transcendentalist,
Parsons charges Mills with holding to a utopian ideology which con-
ceived of the possibility of a society without constraint:
Back of all this lies, I am sure, an only partially manifest 'metaphysical'
position, which Mills shares with Veblen and a long line of indicters of
modern industrial society in which power does not play a part at all.
This is a philosophical and ethical background which is common both to
utopian liberalism and socialism in our society and to a good deal of 'capi-
talist' ideology. They have in common an underlying 'individualism' of a
certain type. This is not primarily individualism in the sense that the welfare
and rights of the individual constitute fundamental moral values, but rather
that both individual and collective rights are alleged to be promoted only by
minimizing the positive organization of social groups. The question of the
deeper and longer-run dependence of the goals and capacities of individuals
themselves on social organization is simply shoved into the background. It
seems to me that he is clearly and, in the degree to which he pushes this
position, unjustifiably anti-capitalist.13
The analogy could be pushed further. As a transcendentalist Parsons
tends to view stratification and power in terms of their contribution
to system order; Mills is interested not in legitimate, but in illegitimate
stratification and power and its negative effect on individuals within a
society. The pre-occupation ofimmanests with problems of freedom and
transcendentalists with problems of authority and constraint is even
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 JOHN HORTON
more succinctly demonstrated in the opposition of Erich Fromm and
John Schaar. Schaar significantly titles his attack on Fromm The
Escapefrom Authority,authority being the concept conspicuously absent
from the works of Fromm.14

CONTEMPORARY DEFINITIONS OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION: THE

QUEST FOR OBJECTIVITY AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF SUBJECTIVITY

Although immanest and transcendental traditions continue, the

existing trend is to deny ideological influences in the firm belief that
value and science, social practice and theory, are and should be,
separated in the name of scientific objectivity. This trend is well il-
lustrated by most contemporary definitions of anomie and alienation.
As a private humanist the sociologist may be seduced by the radical
ethical overtones of alienation or anomie; as a scientific sociologist he
denies, in the name of objectivity, the very object of his attraction. With
the exception of a few vocal mavericks from R. S. Lynd to C. W. Mills,15
men who did not distinguish absolutely in action or in theory between
value and science, American sociologists have made a concerted effort
to cleanse alienation and anomie of the messy conditions of their birth
in the polemical writings of Marx and Durkheim. Ideologically, they
proclaim the 'end of ideology'.
There are at least three standard formulas for the rite of purification;
all three involve begging the question of values. In each, the ethical
content of the concepts and the historically grounded perspective of
the sociological observer are overlooked. The necessary relationship
between occupational structure of the sociologist, his perspective, and
his concepts are obscured. Not only is the role of values overlooked, but,
under the guise of value free sociology, the values are generally changed
in a conservative direction.
The question of value and the perspective of the sociologist is begged
by shifting the source and responsibility for evaluation away from the
observer to (I) the persons being observed (the psychological approach),
(2) the values of the dominant groups which set the boundaries of the
social system being observed (the middle-range approach), and/or
(3) the supra-individual standards of the community of sociologists (the
professional ideology approach). The techniques are characteristic of
occupational specialties in the contemporary social structure of socio-
logy: the survey research man, the middle-range theoretician, and pro-
fessional ideologist. I shall discuss these approaches in turn as they
relate to the dehumanization of anomie and alienation.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO ANOMIE AND ALIENATION

The first approach, shifting the source of meaning to the persons

observed, that is, from a sociological to a social psychological level of
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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION

analysis, is typical of survey research. The sociologist who specializes

in finding correlations usually defines anomie and alienation in terms
of feelings individuals have about themselves, other people, or goals
and means to goals. By this formula, he transforms alienation and
anomie into broad metaphorical terms for a vast range of personal,
psychological discontents, which can be operationalized for survey re-
search. For example, alienation defined as powerlessness, or anomie
psychologized into anomia are measured by agree-disagree questions.
Then these measures are related to levels of socio-economic status, to
prejudice, political extremism, or some other form of non-conforming
behaviour. 6 If the resulting constellation of correlationssuggestssocial
disorder, the narrowly empirical sociologist can argue that it is be-
cause his respondents,not he, have defined it as such. The question of
the observer's perspective is thus circumvented by fragmenting the
concepts and making them psychological; thereby appearing to divest
them of their values.
The social psychological approach is exemplifiedin some of the work
of Melvin Seeman. 7 Seeman calls his six measuresalienation. However,
he includes probable reactions to anomie as well as to alienation. His
'self-estrangement'and 'powerlessness'come very close to the feelings
of one who might be alienated in the Marxist sense. 'Normlessness'and
'meaninglessness' might be reactions to unstructured situations or
anomie. 'Isolation' could be included under either of the classical
definitions. Of course, neither Marx nor Durkheim would have tested
their cases by measuring attitudes. One can be falsely-conscious (not
conscious of defacto alienation); there are also Freudians, religionists,
and hip existentialistswho see egoism and anarchy as the human con-
dition (accepting of anomie).
In spite of the inclusivenessof Seeman's measure, it does leave out
one meaning crucial to the original radical concepts of alienation and
anomie-egoism and self-interest. Perhaps this is because self-interest
is so widely accepted as a value in the American system, and therefore,
is not usually thought of as a reason for discontent and deviant be-
haviour.
However, the question remains, in what sense are the psychological
definitions value-free? By combining some of the classical meanings,
operationally separating them from their theoretical contexts, and by
reducing them to psychologicalmeasures,only the appearanceof value-
free objectivity is gained. One must still be alienated from something,
anomic in terms of some standardsof health. Presumably, it is the job
of the respondentsto tell us that they are alienated, and that this is the
source of their problems. But are not Seeman and others in fact building
in a theory of order and disorder by relating operationalized measures
to non-conforming behaviour, and, incidentally, assuring the nature
of their findings? Are they not merely hiding their own conviction,
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 JOHN HORTON

projected on the 'objective' facts, that alienation and anomie are im-
portant causes of social disorder and deviance? If this be error, it is
error which cannot be eliminated by controlling bias or dreaming of
better value-free concepts. Seeman is justifiably testing his own per-
spective, not that of his respondents.The error lies in not admitting it,
not discussing the question of alienation from what, knowledge for
what purpose.

THE MIDDLE-RANGE APPROACH

In the occupationalstructureof sociology,the 'value-free'theoretician

behind value-free survey research is the 'middle-range' sociologist. He
repackages classical theories into workable hypotheses which can be
used by any number of non-theoretically inclined specialists in the
many substantive areas of sociology. The 'middle-range'market alters
old theories; 8 in the process of simplification,they are fragmentedand
divested of their original ethical, historical, and often radical signifi-
cance. The problem of the perspective of the observer and of the com-
munity of sociologists is avoided by interpretingvalues not as political
and utopian ideals, but as neutral objects of the social system being
observed. The question of whose values, and why, goes unanswered.
The technique of middle-range value-free sociology is unsuccessful,
for the neutral attitude toward social phenomena is by conviction or
default identification with the cultural order of the middle classes.
The middle-range approach to the concept of anomie is exemplified
in the works of R. K. Merton and others who have used variations of
this concept in their analysis of deviant behaviour.'9 Merton's value-
free concept rests on acceptance of the success and self-interest ethic
of the American middle classes. I understand Merton to mean that a
given society is anomic where there is a disjunction between the legiti-
mate goals (culture) and opportunity structures (social structure).
Specifically, American society is anomic in so far as there are socially
structuredbarriersto the achievement of the culturally legitimate goal
of success and status.
The political and essentially conservative content of his definition
is apparent when it is compared with that of Durkheim. Anomie, de-
fined as a disjunction between the success goal and legitimate oppor-
tunities to achieve success, may very well be a socially structureddis-
content in American society, yet Merton's anomie differs from that of
Durkheim's in one crucial respect-in its identification with the very
groups and values which Durkheim saw as the prime source of anomie
in industrial societies. For Durkheim, anomie was endemic in such
societies not only because of inequality in the conditions of competition,
but, more importantly, because self-interested striving (the status and
success goals) had been raised to social ends. The institutionalization
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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION
of self-interest meant the legitimization of anarchy and amorality.
Morality requires, according to Durkheim's modification of Kantian
views, social goals obeyed out of disinterest and altruism, not self-
interest and egoism. To maximize opportunities for achieving success
would in no way end anomie. Durkheim questioned the very values
which Merton holds constant.
The essential difference between classical and most contemporary
definitions of anomie and alienation is not that the former are value-
laden and the latter value-free. Both contain values, but different
values. Classical concepts are radical and utopian: their values refer
to ideal social conditions. Contemporary concepts are ideological in
their identification with existing social conditions. Marx and Durkheim
described and condemned. They condemned modern Western societies
as alienated and anomic in terms of standardswhich transcendedtheir
institutions. For many American sociologists the referent for anomie
and alienation is the present; but if they condemn existing conditions,
it is in terms of the values of the dominant groups reified into the values
of the social system. Paradoxically, from either a Marxian or a Durk-
heimian perspective, contemporaryuses of the concepts of anomie and
alienation would be examples of alienation and anomie. To define a
concept in terms of the success goal or to attempt to make concepts
value-free might be the expected response of sociologistsworking in an
alienating division of labour and pursuing the self-interestethic of the
middle classes. Such sociologistsneed not question that which was most
problematic for Marx and Durkheim.

THE IDEOLOGY OF OBJECTIVITY

A third formula for value-free sociology locates objectivity in the

standards of the scientific community. This is the solution of the pro-
fessionalideologist and it provides a rationale for both the middle-range
and survey researchsociologists.It has been Karl Popper'sanswer to the
threatening subjectivism of the sociology of knowledge.20 He rightly
asserts that objectivity need not be influenced by the prejudices of the
individual scientists.Whatever his prejudices, they can be corrected by
the collective, constraining standards of the community of scientists,
the standards of inter-subjective testability and criticism. No one can
doubt this important source of social control. However, the Popper
solution is no solution because it begs the question of value by con-
fusing consensus with objectivity; there is also collective as well as
individual bias. For example, our functional models and our methods
of testability may reflect our agreement on a way and method of look-
ing at reality, and not reality itself. There are as many alternatives as
there are alternatives for social action. If the perspective of the American
sociologists is to be located in the social organization of sociology, then
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 JOHN HORTON
the standardsof that organization must also be located in the changing
context of social history, and objectivity as verification and predict-
ability will be seen to operate within the changing context of collective
subjectivity.

THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF VALUE EVASION

These tactics of evasion are in no sense unique to contemporary

American sociology; what is unique are the social conditions which
have made them so convincing. Marx and Durkheim also begged the
question of values by shifting the focus of value to the things being
observed. Durkheim invested former patterns of social control with
moral qualities and interpreted the world as a natural order. Marx
projected humanist values into the evolving pattern of history seen as a
political order.2 Unlike contemporary sociologists, they have less
successfullyescaped the charge of value-laden sociology. Their escape
was barred by the radical values which they asserted and by the un-
specialized character of their practical sociological activity; they were
personally responsible for the now separated functions of sociology-
theory, method, and use of findings. In modern sociology values are
officially overlooked and actually changed. The sociological question
is, importantly, why is this so?
One obvious explanation for a lack of awareness of values is that
values in contemporary sociology often are descriptions of crucial
values in the existing social order. (Values are invisible unless looked
for-or challenged.) The definitionsof Marx and Durkheim are readily
exposed as value-laden, not because they contain values, but because
they contain radical values, opposed to and not realized in the status
quo.Radical values are likely to be identified for what they are. In the
present atmosphere of consensus and lack of debate in the social
sciences, conservativevalues will pass for natural and objective descrip-
tions of things.
More profound sociological reasons could be found in the changing
social organization of sociology and in the social origins of sociologists.
The present specialization and division of labour in sociology could
account for the habit of denying the role of value and social structurein
obtaining objective and socially significant knowledge; the position of
the sociologistin sociology and in the broadercommunity could account
for the kind of values expressed.
Concepts can appear to be value-free as long as the sociologist does
not question his values and as long as he does not see their influence
because in practice he is able to separate his role of scientist from his
role as private citizen. Values and action may be united in one person,
as was the case with Marx and Durkheim, or dispersed in a system of
specialized roles. It is only in the latter situation that the theoretically
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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION

inclined sociologist can appear to escape the charge of value-laden

sociology. Being specialized in his activity and isolated from the total
sociological enterprise, he may not personally experience or have
control over the connections which exist between occupational struc-
ture, perspective and value, and directions of research. Identified with
the dominant institutions and values in his sector of society, these
values become unproblematic and irrelevant for his problem of predic-
tion within the accepted boundaries of his social system.
In other words, the doctrine of value-free sociology might be most
strongly asserted under the social conditions of value consensus and
occupational division of theoretical and practical aspects of sociology.
The occupational division of labour in sociology complicates and
clouds the relationship between values and research for individual,
specialized sociologists. Consensus,by turning values into things, hides
the subjective basis of consensus; it transforms subjectivity into the
objective and natural boundaries of social action. Thus, the province
of social research and concept formation falls within the invisible, sub-
jective boundaries of consensus.The sociologist talks more about means
and methods than goals. The radical concept of anomie, which ques-
tioned the goal of individual success, is re-defined conservatively as a
problem of inadequate means for achieving success. Nothing in the
environment of Marx and Durkheim gave support for the ideology of
objectivity. They were opposed to the dominant values; they combined
theory and practice in their own activities-in them were fused those
roles which later have been differentiated.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

I have argued first that the classicaldefinitionsof anomie and aliena-

tion rested on opposed utopian descriptions of essentially the same
social discontent. Secondly, I assertedthat the history of these concepts
since then has been a history not of the emergence of value-free con-
cepts but of the transformationof values. Thirdly, and in less detail,
I have suggested that these ideological changes might be explained
sociologically in terms of the changing class position of the sociologist
and the organization of sociology. Finally the paper raises a more
general question of the relationship between value and research in
sociology. By locating the practice and ideology of value-free sociology
in time, historical research throws doubt on any theoretical position
which defines science and objectivity ahistorically through the reifica-
tion of what is practised in one historical period. If the sociologist
should practise sociology on himself, he is obliged to recognize the
possibility that the doctrine of value-free concepts of alienation and
anomie and value-free sociology reflect a generalized awareness of
a particular historical situation of value consensus and division of
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 JOHN HORTON

sociology into practical and theoretical activities. Being a sociologist,

the sociologistmust ask, is the doctrine of value-free sociology the only
way, and necessarily the only desirableway, of perceiving the relation-
ship between value and knowledge?Is he perhaps accepting uncritically
and finding ideologicaljustification for his own historical situation?
The conclusion doubtless requires a footnote of clarification. Since
any discussion of the sociology of sociology may be taken as a direct
attack on science by those behavioristicallyand positivisticallyinclined
sociologistswho do not accept the premise that a social fact is behaviour
seen from a perspective, I should be more precise about what I am
and am not attacking. I am not pro-irrationality,pro-subjectivity,and
anti-science. Science operateswithin a changing context of subjectivity.
There is no necessaryconflict between the sociologistof knowledge and
the methodologist,because one prefersto study the social determination
of thought, and the other to test the accuracy of propositionswithin a
given universe of value. I think the proponents of the sociology of
knowledge are not denying external reality, but affirming the human
connection with that reality. They argue that knowledge is relational
to man. They do not deny objectivity, but contend that men are ob-
jective about quite different things: What things is a practical question
of what perspective and what values for what purpose. The accuracy of
what is found out certainly depends on predictability and the old trial
and error methods of science. I am not suggestingthat Marx and Durk-
heim were better sociologists,and that we should return to their radical
definitions of anomie and alienation and to their ways of handling the
problem of values. I am not systematically attacking sociologists for
being conservative. However important that attack may be, it is a
political and polemical issuewhich would necessitatea political criticism
of the social organization of sociology.
I am arguing that alienation and anomie, however dehumanized,
contain values, and that these values have changed rather than disap-
peared in the practice of objectivity. With this statement, which can
and should be more systematically verified, I do attack that abstract
and hopefully mythical sociologist who cannot think sociologically
about himself and his work. The subject of attack is ideological thinking
in sociology, and particularly alienated thinking about anomie and
alienation.22 The ideologist represents socially determined knowledge
as not socially determined, claims that his perspectiveshave nothing to
do with his concepts. It may be a personal misfortunenot to know one's
own values; it is uncomfortable to attack and be attacked from value
positions; but it is simply unsociological to deny the influence of values
-whatever one's values or value confusion-and to represent one's
work as objective in the highly ambiguous sense of value-free.

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 DEHUMANIZATION OF ANOMIE AND ALIENATION 299

NOTES
1
In selecting the word 'dehumaniza- (immanent?) definitions of man and
tion' I was thinking of Ortega y Gasset's society. He argued that socialism and
essay, 'The Dehumanization of Art'. By utilitarianism as monistic doctrines were
this association, I am suggesting that false because they could not explain
objectification and reification in the altruistic behaviour or the existence of
social sciences may be part of a more general concepts. They failed to explain
general social trend. social phenomena which do not have
la Karl Mannheim, Ideologyand Utopia. their origin in self-interested and utili-
New York: Harvest, Harcourt, Brace and tarian motives of individuals. See Emile
Company, first published, 1936, p. 49. Durkheim, 'The Dualism of Human
2Emile Durkheim, Suicide, Glencoe: Nature and its Social Conditions', in
The Free Press, 1951, p. 257. Kurt A. Wolff (ed.), Emile Durkheim,
3 Karl Marx, 'Economic and Philo- 1858-1917, Columbus: Ohio State Univer-
sophical Manuscripts', in Erich Fromm, sity Press, 96o0, pp. 325-39.
Marx's Concept of Man, New York: 10 Karl Marx, 'Economic and Philo-
Frederick Unger Publishing Company, sophical Manuscripts', op. cit., p. 77.
I961, p. ioi. 11Emile Durkheim, The Division of
4Emile Durkheim, book review of Laborin Society,p. 5.
Antonio Labriola's Essais sur la conception 12 Emile Durkheim, Socialism, p. 285.
materialiste de l'histoire, Revue Philoso- 13 Talcott Parsons, 'The Distribution
phique, 44 (1897), p. 648. of Power in American Society', World
6 Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Politics, io (October 1957), PP. 140--.
Social Action, Glencoe: The Free Press, 14John H. Schaar, Escapefrom Author-
1949, PP. 308-24. ity, The Perspectives
of Erich Fromm,New
6Emile Durkheim, The Division of York: Basic Books, Inc., I961.
Laborin Society,Glencoe: The Free Press, 16 Robert S. Lynd, Knowledgefor What?
i960, pp. 200-6. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
7 Ibid., p. 30. For an elaboration of 1948; C. Wright Mills, The Sociological
this argument see Emile Durkheim, Imagination,New York: Oxford Univer-
Socialism, New York: Collier Books, sity Press, 1959.
1962. 16 For psychological definitions of
8 For a discussion of the anomie and alienation, see among many
relationship
between Comte and Durkheim, see others, Melvin Seeman, 'On the Meaning
Alvin W. Gouldner, 'Introduction', of Alienation', American
SociologicalReview,
Emile Durkheim, Socialism, pp. 7-36. 24 (December 1959), PP. 783-91. Gwynn
Gouldner argues that Durkheim was in Nettler, 'A Measure of Alienation',
fact a critic of Comte; much less con- American Review,22 (December
Sociological
servative than Comte, he envisaged not a 1957), pp. 670-7; Leo Strole, 'Social
return to a Comtean mechanical soli- Integration and Certain Corollaries: An
darity. However, I believe that Gouldner Exploratory Study', AmericanSociological
goes too far in stressing Durkheim's re- Review, 21 (December 1956), pp. 7o6-16;
formism. Durkheim, like other utopian Dwight Dean, 'Meaning and Measure-
conservatives, wanted the re-establish- ment of Alienation', AmericanSociological
ment of social control and constraining Review, 26 (October i961), pp. 753-8.
moral forces. He held to a fixed and a 17 Melvin Seeman, op. cit.
historical conception of social control and 18For a discussion of the relationship
a historical and relativistic conception of of middle-range to classical theories see
its expression. Whether the' division of Maurice R. Stein, 'Psychoanalytic
labour was simple or complex, social con- Thought and Sociological Inquiry',
trol still rested on supra-individual Psychoanalysisand the PsychoanalyticRe-
standards. Durkheim is essentially con- view, 49 (Summer 1962), pp. 22-3.
servative in his Hobbesian conception of 19 Robert K. Merton, 'Social Structure
man and his transcendent conception of and Anomie' and 'Continuities in the
society. Theory of Social Structure and Anomie',
9 Durkheim clearly annunciated his Social TheoryandSocialStructure,Glencoe:
doctrine of the dualism of man and the The Free Press, 1957, PP. 161-94-
transcendence of society. This he con- 20 Karl Popper, The OpenSocietyandIts
trasted with what he called monistic Enemies,Princeton: Princeton University

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300 JOHN HORTON

Press, 1956; especially Chapters 23 and haveemployedideologyin threedifferent

24; The Povertyof Historicism, Boston: senses: (i) ideology as any socially
Beacon Press, 1957; section 32; Logic of determinedperspective;(2) ideologyas
Discovery,New York: Basic Books,
Scientific thought identified with existing social
1959, PP. 44-8. conditions,in this Mannheimianmean-
21For a discussion of the uses of con- ing it is opposedto utopianthinkingor
cepts of natural order and natural law thoughtidentifiedwith ideal or at least
in sociology, see Leon Bramson, The non-existingsocialconditions;(3) finally,
Political Contextof Sociology,Princeton: ideology in the Marxistsense of false-
Princeton University Press, I961, pp. thinking, representingsocially deter-
18-26. minedthoughtas freeof socialdetermin-
a2 For lack of more precise words, I ation.

NOTICES
Mr. M. K. Hopkins, Lecturer in Sociology at the London School of
Economics and Political Science and Fellow of King's College, Cam-
bridge, has become Review Editor of the BritishJournalof Sociology
as
from I October 1964.

A Pakistan Sociological Association has been formed. The first All

Pakistan Sociological Conferencewas held during April this year at the
University of Karachi. Office bearerswere elected for the year 1964-65.
President-Dr. Hassan Nawaz Gardezi; Vice-Presidents-Mr. Afsar-
un-Din and Mrs. Aquila Kiani; General Secretary-Dr. Haider Ali
Chaudhari; and Finance Secretary-Mr. Habib A. Mufti. The
Association has a permanent office in the Department of Sociology,
University of the Panjab, Lahore, West Pakistan. The PakistanJournal
is available to foreign libraries on an exchange basis.
of Sociology

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