Cooperation and the division of labour

It is often argued that without cooperation human life could not survive, and that even ants, bees and mammals cooperate. But comparisons with animals must be made carefully. Two classic views:

Durkheim: solidarity. Sociology mostly did not accept that human nature is 'nasty and brutish'. Durkheim rejected the picture of early humans driven only by hunger and thirst. Society, he said, has a moderating influence that tempers the struggle for existence: 'Wherever there are societies, there is altruism, because there is solidarity.' We find altruism (acting for others without self-interest) from the beginning of humanity.

• For Durkheim, solidarity, the moral force of society, is the key to cooperation. The division of labour, which needs cooperation, meets society's needs; it is both a law of nature and a moral rule of conduct.
• Mechanical solidarity belongs to pre-industrial societies and rests on sameness: most people live similar lives, with little division of labour beyond age and sex, bound by shared beliefs and sentiments, a common conscience.
• Organic solidarity belongs to complex industrial societies and rests on the division of labour and the interdependence it creates. The more specialised people become, the more they depend on each other. A family doing subsistence farming can survive with little help; specialised workers cannot.
• Example (new): in a hospital, a surgeon cannot operate without nurses, anaesthetists, cleaners, pharmacists, electricians and cooks. Each depends on all the others: organic solidarity.

Marx: consciousness and production. Marx wrote that humans begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence. Humans do not only adjust to nature and society: in cooperating they also change the natural and social world. (Indians, for example, had to adjust to English under colonialism, but in doing so created Hinglish.)

• For Marx, in a society with classes, cooperation is not voluntary. The productive power that comes from people working together appears to them as an alien force outside them.
• Alienation is the workers' loss of control over how they organise their own work and over the products of their labour. Compare the fulfilment of a weaver, potter or ironsmith who makes a whole object with a factory worker whose only task all day is to pull a lever or press a button. Cooperation there is enforced.