Durkheim's Argument

Durkheim's argument on social justice is embedded in his broader reflections on the changing nature of solidarity in society. In earlier periods, Durkheim claims, solidarity was based on similarity, with little space for individuality and differentiation: “Solidarity which comes from likeness is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it. But, at that moment, our individuality is nil” (DLS, 130). If this “mechanic” solidarity had continued to prevail, there would have been no space in which individuals could break free from the “conscience commune,” and so there would have been no opportunities for differentiation (see also Stedman Jones Reference Stedman Jones2001, 95; Gelderblom Reference Gelderblom and der Walt2005, 114). For modern societies, in which individualism is a central value, a different kind of solidarity is required, and it does, in fact, develop hand in hand with the development of the division of labor: organic solidarity.Footnote ⁵ Whereas mechanic solidarity “implies that individuals resemble each other,” organic solidarity “presumes their difference” (DLS, 131).Footnote ⁶

To trace the shift from mechanic to organic solidarity, Durkheim analyzes the historical development of different kinds of law: repressive or penal law, and restitutive law. The former expresses the logic of mechanic solidarity by sanctioning deviations from the homogeneous common conscience, whereas the latter regulates contractual relations, which are the hallmark of societies characterized by organic solidarity. Durkheim claims to find a “historical law,” namely that “mechanical solidarity which first stands alone, or nearly so, progressively loses ground, and [. . .] organic solidarity becomes, little by little, preponderant” (DLS, 174). Historically, this is a somewhat simplistic picture. As Lukes notes, Durkheim “vastly understates the degree of interdependence and reciprocity in pre-industrial societies” and “vastly overstates the role of repressive law in pre-industrial societies” (Reference Lukes1985, 159); his theory of punishment is similarly inaccurate (ibid., 163). Thus, Durkheim's historical analyses have to be taken with a grain of salt. But the two models of solidarity can nonetheless be understood as “ideal types” in a Weberian sense: they highlight certain aspects of social reality to better understand changes of this reality. Durkheim is aware that “perfect spontaneity,” a central element of his notion of organic solidarity, is “never met with anywhere as a realized fact” (DLS, 378), but nonetheless sticks to the notion as an analytical tool.

Durkheim does not share the worry raised by Smith, Marx and other commentators from the eighteenth and nineteenth century that the division of labor, while raising productivity, would be detrimental to human development. His vision of a society with divided labor is not one in which individuals are tied to monotonous, stultifying jobs, but rather one in which they flourish by developing their unique talents.Footnote ⁷ In modern societies, he holds, the “categorical imperative of the moral conscience” assumes the form: “Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function” (DLS, 43, emphasis in the original). While, as we will see below, Durkheim rejects inequalities that are based on class or caste, he seems to have thought that there are natural differences in talents and interests that express themselves in the choice of different occupations and lifestyles, and that also justify some material inequalities if these are based on merit. He seems to have assumed that these natural differences would allow all individuals to find positions that would suit their talents and interests,Footnote ⁸ and that material inequalities would remain relatively small.

Why does Durkheim think that modern societies need organic solidarity? The answer to this question has two parts. First, Durkheim's discussion is based on a general assumption that societies need some degree of solidarity. As he puts it in one place: “Men cannot live together [. . .] without tying themselves to one another with strong, durable bonds” (DLS, 228). The continued existence of society is necessary for human life and therefore has highest priority. Durkheim is explicit that the basic assumption that “man wishes to live” (DLS, 34-5) is what gives social scientific insights a normative edge: it “transforms the laws science establishes into imperative rules of conduct” (DLS, 35). Because men want to live, and because they can hardly do so unless societies are held together by some form of solidarity, social scientists should be interested in how solidarity can be created and maintained.Footnote ⁹

Thus, some “social link” (DLS, 137) is needed and, as Durkheim holds in a discussion of Spencer's laissez-faire approach, interest alone is not sufficiently strong a link, because where it “relates men, it is never for more than some few moments” and it creates “only an external link” (DLS, 203). Moreover, interest is not constant, but rather “today, it unites me to you; tomorrow, it will make me your enemy” (DLS, 204). Thus, stronger ties between individuals are needed.

The second reason, specific to modern societies, is the necessity to keep contracts. For Durkheim, “the contract is, par excellence, the juridical expression of co-operation” (DLS, 123), and hence contracts (and with them, contractual law) become more predominant the more differentiated societies become. But for contracts to be kept, it is not sufficient that they can be legally enforced by a public authority: “If contracts were observed only by force or through fear of force, contractual solidarity would be very precarious” (DLS, 382). Rather, it is “necessary, at least in the great majority of cases, that they be spontaneously kept” (ibid.).

Durkheim does not assume, in an anarcho-capitalist fashion, that property rights and contracts arise spontaneously between individuals. He explicitly states that “Every contract [. . .] supposes that behind the parties implicated in it there is society very ready to intervene to gain respect for the engagements which have been made” (DLS, 114, see similarly 215). Hence, “the division of labor,” with its vast web of contractual relations, “cannot do without regulation” (DLS, 376). But neither does he assume that just any form of contract can be enforced by legal regulation. Contracts need to be in line, by and large, with people's sense of right and wrong, otherwise the costs of monitoring and enforcement—to use the language of transaction cost theory—become exorbitant. On the other hand, it is because contracts are products of society, rather than some kind of natural mechanism, that there exist normative expectations about them. As we will see, Durkheim does not aim at a direct regulation of contracts, but rather suggests that a regulation of the distributive structures of society as a whole will create the conditions under which contracts will be seen as just and will be kept “spontaneously.”

Thus, we need solidarity, but in modern societies with highly divided labor and differentiation, solidarity cannot be based on sameness— this would rob individuals of the freedom to develop themselves and their talents in different ways. Fortunately, though, the division of labor brings with it the kind of solidarity that Durkheim describes as “organic”—an aspect of the division of labor that he considers “a good deal more important” than the functions “ordinarily assigned to it by economists” (DLS, 173). Together with contractual relations, “non-contractual relations develop at the same time” (DLS, 206). Through divided labor, “networks of links” have “little by little [. . .] been woven” (DLS, 366), because individuals, within their different positions, stand “in constant relations with neighboring functions, take conscience of their needs, of the changes which they undergo, etc.” (DLS, 372). Individuals are connected to others who fulfil different tasks and know that they “tend, in some way, towards an end” and are “serving something” (ibid.), a common goal they all contribute to. Individuals stand in numerous contractual relations with one another, and this creates “one of the important varieties of organic solidarity,” namely “contractual solidarity” (DLS, 381). An “entire system of rights and duties” arises, which links individuals “together in a durable way,” giving rise to “rules which assure pacific and regular concourse of divided functions” (DLS, 406). In other words, Durkheim emphasizes both individuals’ regular social contact to others that comes with divided labor—a version of the contact hypothesis, one might say— and the development of patterns of behavior, as the two mechanisms through which divided labor creates the kind of solidarity that it, in turn, relies on.Footnote ¹⁰

Thus, the society Durkheim envisions is highly differentiated, but also fluid and open, so that individuals can move relatively freely between different social contexts. It is neither a culturally homogeneous community nor an atomistic society (see also Cladis Reference Cladis and Jeffrey2008, 392), but rather, in Tiryakian's words, “a rich network of social ties, beyond the kinship network, that are freely entered into and developed by social actors” (Reference Tiryakian, Alexander and Smith2008, 307). Individuals are members of different communities, for example, occupational groups, professional associations, civil society organizations, and religious communities. These communities are not sealed off against each other but have porous boundaries, allowing communication and interaction between them. It is this complex set of social relations that keeps a modern, differentiated society together.

But, importantly, all this can only come about if the division of labor happens “spontaneously.” For Durkheim, many exchanges and economic processes are, despite all talk about free exchange, not spontaneous enough, because there are too many obstacles for spontaneity that arise from social inequality. As he states in a key passage:

If the division of labor happens spontaneously, it achieves two goals. First, individuals can find positions within the web of divided labor in which they can develop their talents. Whereas in class societies, “the distribution of social functions [. . .] does not respond [. . .] to the distribution of natural talents,” the aim of modern societies is “to assure the free development of all our socially useful forces” (DLS, 387). Secondly, if the division of labor fulfils Durkheim's criterion of “spontaneity,” it leads to exchanges in which equal social values change hands. This, for Durkheim, is the condition for contracts to be “fully consented to,” because “each receives in effect the thing he desires and delivers what he gives in return so that each has a value for the other” (DLS, 383). The “equilibrium of wills” in the contract flows from “the very equilibrium of things” and is thus “truly spontaneous” (DLS, 383).

What exactly is this “social value” that Durkheim sees as equalized in “truly spontaneous” contracts? He is somewhat vague, maybe even slightly contradictory about it. He holds that objects of exchanges have, at every moment in time, a “determined value” that “represents the quantity of useful labor which it contains” (DLS, 382). While this may sound like an endorsement of a Marxian labor theory of value, Durkheim immediately adds a qualification: he does not mean all labor contained in a product, but rather “that part of the energy capable of producing useful social effects, that is, effects which reply to normal needs” (ibid.). This “magnitude” cannot be “mathematically calculated,” but it is “none the less real” and varies in relation to a number of factors, such as “the sum of efforts necessary to produce the object, the intensity of the needs which it satisfies, and finally the extent of the satisfaction it brings” (ibid.). This is a rather heterogeneous list: while the first element is based on the costs of production, the latter two are related to consumption, and seem to be open to both objectivist and subjectivist interpretations. But Durkheim is not too worried about how to define this “social value,” because he makes two assumptions about it that are crucial for the argument to follow. First, “it is around this point that average value oscillates,” and second, “public conscience” has a “somewhat lively sentiment” of deviations from this value (ibid.).

In fact, a little later he holds that “the appreciation of things cannot be determined a priori, but comes out of exchanges themselves”—but only if “the contracting parties” are “placed in conditions externally equal” (DLS, 383-4), such that they “have no other force than that which comes from their social worth if their labor is to be properly evaluated” (ibid., 384). Any other factor that would create unequal conditions between individuals is an obstacle to the price reflecting the “social value” of products. Here, we arrive at the connection to unjustFootnote ¹¹ social inequality: it creates obstacles to just exchanges, by introducing constraints that distort the conditions under which individuals enter contracts.Footnote ¹² Both the opportunities for individuals to find positions in which they can develop their talents, and the justice of exchanges in terms of “social value,” are put at risk if the positions of market participants are highly unequal because of factors such as inheritance or class membership.

Durkheim is not too specific about what he means by social equality and, whether, for example, he understands it in terms of resources or welfare. Nor does he specify how high the inequality that is in line with merit— a form of inequality that he himself found acceptable, and that he expected individuals to find acceptable— can become. But it is clear that he considered the societies of his time far too unequal, and the existing inequalities not in line with individual merit. The equality he calls for is not uniformity, which would be incompatible with the differentiation of society; rather, it is “equality in the external conditions of conflict” (DLS, 379, 381)—a phrase that is reminiscent of Rousseau's famous line that “no citizen should be so rich that he can buy another, and none so poor that he is compelled to sell himself” (Reference Rousseau and Gourevitch1997, II.11.2).

In a society dominated by class structures or castes rather than by open and fluid networks of social relations, “anxiety and pain” are produced instead of solidarity, because individuals cannot follow their “natural talents” when looking for positions (DLS, 375). Because of class barriers, those who are “most apt at each activity” cannot “indulge in it” (ibid., 376). The impediments in question are not limited to “the direct use of violence,” but also includes “indirect violence,” which “suppresses liberty quite as well” (DLS, 382). In Durkheim's words: “If the engagement which I have extorted by threatening someone with death is morally and legally void, why should it be valid if, to obtain it, I profited from some situation which I did not cause but which put someone else under the necessity of yielding to me or dying?” (ibid.). Therefore, when contracts are concluded in situations of stark inequality, they do not achieve equality in terms of “social value,” because “all superiority has its effects on the manner in which contracts are made” and if it is not based on merit, but on external inequality, it “falsifies the moral conditions of exchange” (DLS, 384). For example, usurious contracts that imply “that one of the contracting parties is too much at the mercy of the other” and that are therefore not recognized as valid by “civilized peoples” (DLS, 385). As Durkheim puts it in the most succinct form: “there cannot be rich and poor at birth without there being unjust contracts” (DLS, 384).

For Durkheim, this is not an abstract demand from the ivory tower, but a widespread and deeply felt position:

Therefore, modern societies need to reduce inequalities “in the external conditions of conflict.” As Stedman Jones puts it, for Durkheim “organic solidarity is only possible ultimately on conditions of justice and equality” (Reference Stedman Jones2001, 97). If few areas of society were regulated by contracts, social injustices would be of lesser importance and could probably be outweighed by a strong collective conscience (DLS, 384). But in modern societies such injustices “become more insupportable,” “since the circumstances which give rise to them reappear very often and also because the sentiments which they evoke can no longer be as completely tempered by contrary sentiments” (DLS, 385). Only inequalities that stem from differences in the creation of social value under conditions of external equality are permissible. The “normal,” and normatively desirable, condition that Durkheim envisages is thus a perfect meritocracy (Lukes Reference Lukes1985, 176), which is compatible with “moral individualism.” And, as Cotterrell puts it (Reference Cotterrell2011, 6): “In Durkheim's view, this [moral individualism] is the only moral basis on which interaction between people can occur spontaneously, and with calculability, security, stability and mutual confidence, in complex modern societies.”

We can now summarize Durkheim's argument in the following series of claims:

1. 1. Societies need a certain degree of solidarity.

2. 2. In modern, differentiated societies, this must be organic solidarity.

3. 3. Organic solidarity requires that the division of labor happen spontaneously, allowing individuals to find positions in which they can develop their talents, and allowing exchanges to be just (and to be perceived as such).

4. 4. For the division of labor to happen spontaneously, equality “in the external conditions of conflict” is required.

5. 5. Therefore, modern societies need to move toward equality “in the external conditions of conflict,” abolishing class structures and hereditary positions, such that the only remaining inequalities are those arising from differential achievements.

Is Durkheim's Argument Plausible?

Is Durkheim's argument still convincing today? To answer this question, it is helpful to consider its premises one by one.

1) Societies need a certain degree of solidarity.

The idea that societies need a certain degree of solidarity, which has its roots in the Aristotelian idea of civic friendship, is widely shared among theorists of justice, but it plays a slightly different role in their account than in Durkheim's. Instead of “solidarity,” the most prominent notion in contemporary debates is that of an “ethos of justice.” Rawls presupposes such an ethos and describes society as a “social union of social unions” (Reference Rawls1999, 459; see, e.g., Walton and Camia Reference Walton and Camia2013, 170-82 for a discussion).Footnote ¹⁵ G.A. Cohen's criticism of Rawls's account picks up this assumption: he argues, in a nutshell, that if a society has such an ethos, it is not necessary to use financial incentives in the economic realm, as some interpretations of the difference principle hold, and far more egalitarian distributions can be realized (Reference Cohen2008). Both authors share the assumption that an ethos of justice is a precondition for distributive justice, and the debate is about what role it plays in its realization. For Durkheim, in contrast, some degree of solidarity—we do not get a precise measure from his text—is needed for complex functional reasons, and distributive justice is needed as a precondition for achieving it.

The first premise of Durkheim's argument is thus quite plausible, especially if one takes into account that purely strategic behavior, as assumed in rational choice models, would mean that individuals would take advantage of opportunities for shirking or cheating to a far greater degree than can actually be observed. In contexts of divided labor, there are numerous opportunities for such behavior, and monitoring is costly and imperfect (see, e.g., Heath Reference Heath2009 for a discussion). Hence, it is also plausible to assume, with Durkheim, that societies with highly divided labor require more rather than less solidarity, so that contracts are kept spontaneously. His rejection of the idea that self-interest and the alleged “invisible hand” of markets alone could hold a society together is equally convincing: for markets to function well, a carefully designed legal framework is necessary, and this framework needs to be brought about by the political system, which requires, at a minimum, a commitment of all citizens to stick to the rules and procedures of this system (see also Gelderblom Reference Gelderblom and der Walt2005, 110-3).

Contemporary studies in the sociology of markets and labor confirm that processes of divided labor do indeed take place “embedded” in social relations. In Granovetter's words: “some degree of trust must be assumed to operate, since institutional arrangements alone could not entirely stem force or fraud”—otherwise we would even “be afraid to give the gas station attendant a 20-dollar-bill” when having “bought only five dollars’ worth of gas” (Reference Granovetter1985, 489). This trust usually arises because “business relations are mixed up with social ones” (ibid., 495), not only at the level of management, but also at lower levels. Another theorist who has recently emphasized the importance of social ties at the workplace, including ties across ethnic lines, is Estlund. As she puts it: “we may be bowling alone, but we are working together” (Reference Estlund2003, 6), and this often “generates personal feelings of affection, sympathy, empathy, and friendship among co-workers” (ibid. 28). Kunda's in-depth study of the culture of an engineering company includes numerous examples of relationships of trust and even friendship at work (Reference Kunda1996, 167).Footnote ¹⁶

While these authors focus mostly on positive experiences between individuals who belong more or less to the same social classes, they also report examples of social exclusion at the workplace. Kunda reports a heart-wrenching scene in which all employees, except some temporary workers, receive a turkey for Christmas; one of the temporary workers starts crying because she is so upset about this symbolic exclusion from the firm (Reference Kunda1996, 213). Estlund discusses examples of low wage jobs in which cooperation and sociability are systematically undercut by managers (Reference Estlund2003, esp. 56-8). Such experiences of inequality and exclusion are toxic for social trust, and likely undermine the willingness to keep contracts. Some new forms of digitally organized work, for example, Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform, hardly offer opportunities for socializing with coworkers at all, raising important questions about the ability of such jobs to contribute to the creation of social solidarity.

2) In modern, differentiated societies, this must be organic solidarity.

Durkheim's assumption that in modern societies solidarity is organic, not mechanic, contains a value judgment: namely, that it is better to rely on this kind of solidarity rather than to return to social structures in which mechanic solidarity prevailed. The latter path would require not only giving up the ideal of individualityFootnote ¹⁷ and the opportunities for individuals to develop their different talents, but also giving up the division of labor itself, and with it the advantages it brings in terms of economic efficiency: we would be equal (and forced to be so), but we would also be equally poor. This is hardly an attractive picture, although fantasies about social homogeneity have had an uncanny revival in contemporary politics. Thus, to challenge this premise of Durkheim's argument, one would either have to show that solidarity is not needed at all, or that there are other types of solidarity that he has failed to take into account.Footnote ¹⁸

3) Organic solidarity requires that the division of labor happen spontaneously, allowing individuals to find positions in which they can develop their talents and allowing exchanges to be just (and to be perceived as such) and 4) for the division of labor to happen spontaneously, equality “in the external conditions of conflict” is required.

The core of Durkheim's argument are the claims contained in premises 3) and 4), which imply that organic solidarity is undermined if individuals take it that a) there is no equality of opportunity, so that individuals cannot reach positions that correspond to their talents, and b) exchanges, and the prices paid in them, are unjust.Footnote ¹⁹ Here, I first focus on the conceptual relations between equality of conditions and equality of opportunity and just prices, and discuss the problem of the perception of these phenomena in the next section. While I cannot here revisit the debates around equality of opportunity and just prices in full detail, it is worth picking up a few threads to see whether Durkheim's picture is plausible.

“Equality of opportunity” is widely assumed to be an important principle of justice; it is often suggested as a more attractive principle than “equality of outcomes,” because the latter is both difficult to realize, at least when certain basic freedoms are granted, and stands in tension with intuitions about the role of choice in determining individuals’ positions. For Rawls, “fair equality of opportunity” plays an important role: “those who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospect of success regardless of their initial place in the social system” (Reference Rawls1999, 63). This notion goes beyond a purely formal notion of equality of opportunity: it requires robust measures to make sure that those who are born into disadvantaged positions really do have access to substantively equal opportunities. How exactly to spell out what this principle requires, however, and how to weigh it against other principles of justice, is a matter of much debate (for an overview see, e.g., Arneson Reference Arneson2015). As Chambers (Reference Chambers2009) has recently argued, equality of opportunity would have to be realized dynamically over the course of individuals’ lives, and thereby runs into a number of challenges. Fishkin (Reference Fishkin2014) has suggested that the best way of realizing it is to make sure that individuals have repeated opportunities, over the course of their lives, to choose new paths, rather than being sorted into winners and losers at “bottlenecks” such as university entry.

Some of the problems and tensions around the notion of equality of opportunity also arise in Durkheim's text. For example, he seems to assume that one can easily draw a line between “natural” and “social” differences, without discussing the ways in which natural talents and socialization are intertwined (for a discussion see especially Sirianni Reference Sirianni1984, 454-5). He seems to assume an “unreflective naturalism of fixed aptitudes,” with justice becoming “a question of matching and exactly fitting naturalistically given aptitudes” (Sirianni Reference Sirianni1984, 461; see also Lukes Reference Lukes1985, 177). Neither does he discuss whether there might be disagreements about what counts as a social contribution, and hence as deserving a higher return; he seemed to assume that the criteria for making contributions, and thereby also the criteria for who should be given which position, can be agreed on by the whole society. Nor does he specify what kinds of institutions or interventions could create the equality in “external conditions” that he emphasizes so much.

But there is a reason why Durkheim is not too worried about these details. Instead of attempting to disentangle the Gordian knot of the concept of equality of opportunity, he cuts right through it by postulating that under conditions of “external equality,” absent the constraints created by social inequality and inherited social positions, equality of opportunity would arise by itself. He probably did not expect perfect equality of opportunity, but a sufficient approximation—and, in any case, a far greater realization than was given in the class society he observed in his day. He might also have assumed that the differences in pay and the ensuing social differentiation that would arise on purely meritocratic grounds would not be very large.

Later in life, Durkheim emphasized the role of professional associations for the social integration of individuals. In the wake of market-liberal thinking since the 1980s, professions have often been criticized as narrow-minded defenders of unjustified privileges. But in societies characterized by ever further differentiation, it is plausible to think that professions can also play a positive role in society, as defenders of a “civic” (Sullivan Reference Sullivan2005) or “democratic” (Dzur Reference Dzur2008) professionalism have argued. According to such an understanding, professions would interact openly and in an egalitarian spirit with citizens. As such, they could also be tools for equality of opportunity, for example by introducing children from different backgrounds into their areas of work, and by encouraging them to embark on professional careers. Although it would probably be naive to think that they could compensate for the failures of public education systems that are crucial for equality of opportunity, professional associations, if sufficiently open, could make an important social contribution in this area.

Empirical data confirm Durkheim's basic assumption that more egalitarian societies allow for more equality of opportunity. As Walton and Camia put it in a summary of recent research: “social mobility and income equality will, typically, operate in tandem” (Reference Walton and Camia2013, 169). All other questions about equality of opportunity fade to the background, one might say, given how obvious the obstacles to it that arise out of social inequality are. If we read Durkheim as wanting to create equality of opportunity indirectly, by removing obvious obstacles, we can forgive him that he did not go into too much detail.Footnote ²⁰ To reject his approach, one would have to defend the claim that there is something fundamentally wrong with the ideal of equality of opportunity, even if it is understood in reasonably pragmatic terms and not necessarily as the only one, or most basic, principle of justice. Or one would have to show that equality of “external circumstances,” appropriately specified, does not support equality of opportunity. Unless one of these arguments has been provided, we can endorse Durkheim's line of argument.

The second line that Durkheim draws from the micro level to the macro level goes from the perception of exchanges as unjust to the unravelling of organic solidarity. The discussion about “just prices” is age-old; it started with Aristotle's reflections on commutative justice and ran through the Middle Ages, but was by and large given up when economics started to develop as an independent discipline (for a historical overview see, e.g., Reiff Reference Reiff2013, chap. 2; Johnson Reference Johnson1938). In recent years, however, it has been picked up again, maybe as a result of the eroding credibility of economics as a value-neutral science.

One important position in the debate about just prices sees undistorted market prices as just. Such prices are seen as expressing an equivalence in values, cancelling out idiosyncrasies of taste, and offering the possibility of reselling an object at roughly the same price. This criterion helps distinguish between “normal” conditions and temporary fluctuations, for example, price spikes in short periods of undersupply. Scholars typically acknowledge that this criterion is not very precise, but argue that it helps to diagnose massive deviations (see, e.g., Wertheimer Reference Wertheimer1996; Elegido Reference Elegido2009, Reference Elegido2015). There is some disagreement, however, as to why undistorted market prices should serve as a criterion for just prices. Aristotle and the School of Salamanca saw them as expressing “equivalence in value,” a position recently revived by Elegido (Reference Elegido2009, Reference Elegido2015). Another reading holds that, in open markets, prices approach the costs of production, because competition will make sure that there are no extraordinary profits, but prices also cannot fall below costs of production in the long run, because then producers would not survive. This leads to theories of just prices in terms of costs of production, a position recently defended by Reiff (Reference Reiff2013).

Koehn and Wilbratte have suggested an alternative interpretation of the notion of a just price, following their reading of Aquinas, namely to ask what a reasonable person, as “the best judge of our natural needs and the correct value of goods” (Reference Koehn and Wilbratte2012, 505) would pay for a given product. But this proposal runs into epistemic difficulties; it may work in face-to-face contexts in which individuals have sufficient knowledge about the conditions of producers and consumers, but seems hardly applicable to complex, large-scale, and dynamic processes of divided labor (cf. ibid. 511, for a discussion; see also Elegido Reference Elegido2015, 561-2). In the latter contexts, it is very difficult to evaluate the weight of different needs, not to mention the heterogeneous value judgments that might influence such evaluations. Thus, even from that perspective, undistorted market prices might be seen as useful indicators of just prices. Rough as they may be, they have the advantage that we have better epistemic access to them, whereas knowledge about other standards can be very difficult to acquire, either as a matter of principle or for practical reasons.

Durkheim's proposal thus follows a long tradition of arguments that use prices in open markets as yardsticks for commutative justice. He adds the condition that individuals have to stand in conditions of “external” equality. In a sense, this is nothing new: the absence of unjust background conditions seems to be standardly presupposed in much of the discussion. Often, the main focus is on unjust background conditions in the sense of unequal access to information or fraud (e.g., Elegido Reference Elegido2009, 569). But Durkheim's argument is quite compelling: if the conditions of market participants are highly unequal, it is likely that they will also have unequal market power.

It might be said that what is required for preventing such problems is not social justice in the sense of (rough) equality, but rather sufficiency: no individual must be so poor that she cannot refuse certain offers, even if she receives less than the just value.Footnote ²¹ One may speculate whether for Durkheim it would have been sufficient to rule out cases in which individuals’ basic needs are unfulfilled, and they therefore have to consent to contracts that do not constitute exchanges of equal value. One can imagine a society that ensures that no individual falls below such a threshold, and that is nonetheless highly unequal. In such a society, however, individuals’ ability to pay would vary vastly, and this would influence market prices. Imagine a market, for example in suburban middle class homes. When a number of very rich buyers enter this market, prices move upwards. Middle-class buyers would not become destitute, but they would have a harder time buying homes.Footnote ²² What would happen in the next round—whether more homes would be built and prices would fall again, or whether middle-class wages would rise because employees would negotiate higher pay, or whether the government would introduce market regulation or more progressive taxation—depends on countless facts about the society in question. Durkheim seems to have assumed that only if the overall level of inequality does not become too large, market forces can continue to play freely, and the division of labor can remain spontaneous. His picture is one in which markets resemble communicating vessels: if there is a blockage somewhere in the system, this leads to distortions elsewhere. To make sure that the system as a whole remains sufficiently spontaneous, the differences between rich and poor need to be contained.

Thus, Durkheim pursues a very specific strategy for bringing about just prices. His approach is not the one that governs the perspective of the just price debate, which asks what sellers or buyers should do in situations in which there is no market competition, and sellers or buyers have some influence on how to set prices. This is a moral perspective that tells individuals how to act: it tells them, for example, that they must not “take advantage of the vulnerabilities of their transactors, such as ignorance, special need or lack of bargaining ability” (Elegido Reference Elegido2015, 563). A second strategy for pursuing just prices would be to regulate them by fixing prices directly or by banning deviations. But this only works if one knows the just price beforehand, which means that one runs into the epistemic problems alluded to earlier.Footnote ²³ Direct regulation runs the risk of being too conservative, because it is tied to prevailing perceptions of how much different occupational groups contribute to the social product.Footnote ²⁴ Free markets are often praised for their ability to allow social innovation; if prices were regulated such that individuals would always receive what has traditionally been considered just, this would probably make innovation very difficult.

There are thus good reasons to follow Durkheim in not adopting either the moral or the direct regulatory strategy. Rather, he proposes a strategy of indirect regulation: by making sure that markets take place on a level playing field, there is no need for individuals to be morally motivated, nor for regulators to know exactly how to fix just prices. This provides markets with sufficient flexibility to bring about social and technological innovation. In doing so, they signal, at least roughly, the “social value” of goods. The phrase “at least roughly” deserves emphasis: Durkheim did not expect a very precise definition of social value. As we have seen, he holds that this value cannot be determined “a priori, but comes out of exchanges themselves” (DLS, 383). One can read this either as saying that the result of exchanges on a basis of “external equality” is, by definition, the just price, or as saying that there are independent (but difficult to access) standards for the just price, and the best way for bringing them about is by creating a level playing field for markets.

The picture Durkheim draws is compelling: by creating circumstances of distributive justice or “external equality,” commutative justice is enhanced.Footnote ²⁵ The exchanged values are socially equivalent, so the differences that arise between individuals reflect genuine social contributions, and are therefore in line with justice. The burden of proof lies with those who deny either the plausibility of an appropriately qualified notion of just prices or the plausibility of Durkheim's indirect strategy of bringing them about by leveling the playing field.

The Perception of Justice and the Problem of Ideological Distortion

Durkheim's reflections on the connection between external equality, equality of opportunity, and just prices are plausible, and resemble arguments brought forward in recent debates. But for his argument, it does not matter, strictly speaking, whether philosophers think that these lines of argument can be defended. What matters is that the members of a society, the people in the street, believe in equality of opportunity and just prices, and consider their violation morally problematic. For then, a situation in which there is no (or not sufficient, whatever the threshold is) equality of opportunity, or prices are not (or not sufficiently, whatever the threshold is) just, is a threat to organic solidarity: individuals will feel alienated from society, and will not feel obliged to stick to contracts anymore. Hence, patterns of perception are crucial for the argumentative link that Durkheim establishes between the micro level and the macro level.

To test Durkheim's claims along these two argumentative lines, two sets of data, within each line, would have to be compared: data on the expectations individuals hold, and data on what they take to be the case in their societies.

As for equality of opportunity, it is a widely shared ideal in many Western societies, especially the U.S. (see, e.g., Stiglitz Reference Stiglitz2013). Individuals in the U.S. also seem to believe that equality of opportunity does exist in their country. One question of the World Value Survey (2010-2014) on luck and work asks participants to pick a number on a scale from 1 to 10 running between “In the long run, hard work usually brings a better life” to “Hard work doesn't generally bring success – it's more a matter of luck and connections.” In the U.S., 52.2% of respondents chose categories 1, 2, or 3, thus endorsing the idea that hard work brings success, and only 10.3% chose categories 8, 9, or 10.Footnote ²⁶ This is, admittedly, a rough measure, and one might wonder what the survey results on a direct statement (“In my society, all individuals have equal opportunities”) would have been, but it indicates that a majority of individuals assume that the values they hold are also realized in their society.

As for just prices, it is harder to know what people think should be the case, because research seems to be very limited. Studies in behavioral economics have explored some of the patterns of when prices are perceived as fair or unfair (e.g., Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler Reference Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler1986). For example, respondents judged it unfair to take advantage of short-term market imbalances, such as when the price for snow shovels in a town's only hardware store is raised after a snowstorm (ibid., 729). There are, however, quite a few irregularities in these data, such as different evaluations of gains and losses, or reference point effects. Neither do we know what people take to be the case in their societies, concerning just prices. At best, we can register public outcries about wages that are perceived as outrageously high or low, or about housing prices that are perceived as unfair. These can serve as indicators that there might indeed be a gap between what people think should be the case, and what they perceive as actually being the case.

But Durkheim's argument here faces a challenge: What if the perceptions individuals have about equality of opportunity or justice of prices are systematically distorted? Individuals may think that their society is meritocratic, while equality of opportunity does not in fact exist; they may think that prices are just, while prices, in fact, come about because of highly unequal social relations and the ensuing constraints on individuals’ choices. Maybe one could even take the argument a step further: if the perception of these phenomena as unjust could create a threat to social cohesion, shouldn't we expect that the more unequal a society is, the more distorted the perceptions are, because otherwise such societies would simply not be feasible anymore?Footnote ²⁷

Ideology is a complex topic, and has recently made a comeback in philosophical research (see, e.g., Stanley Reference Stanley2015). I cannot delve here into a detailed analysis, but it is striking that, with regard to the perception of equality of opportunity, and also with regard to social inequality in general, a country like the U.S. exhibits massive gaps between perception and reality. For example, in a recent survey study, Kraus and Tan found that, across a series of questions and scenarios, individuals overestimated class mobility (operationalized as the likelihood of moving between income percentiles) by almost 23 percentage points on average (Reference Kraus and Jacinth2015, 110). Norton and Ariely found that Americans “vastly underestimated the actual level of wealth inequality in the United States” (Reference Norton and Ariely2011, 10); they preferred a distribution that resembled more that of Sweden than the actual figures for the U.S.

Thus, we have to take into account the possibility of distorted perceptions when evaluating the plausibility of Durkheim's views today. At the moment, we do not have sufficient empirical data for tracking the different steps of his argument in detail. But there are a few more coarse-grained pieces of evidence that point in the general direction his argument suggests. For one thing, various studies, especially by Stephen Knack, as well as data for the European Union analyzed by Walton and Camia, show that there is indeed a connection between solidarity (measured as social trust) and social justice: the “the two considered factors (trust and income inequality) vary in a related way,” with lower levels of social trust correlated to higher income inequality (Walton and Camia Reference Walton and Camia2013, 173). One explanation is the widespread human tendency, identified in numerous studies (e.g., Fischbacher, Gächter, and Fehr Reference Fischbacher, Gächter and Fehr2001), to act as “conditional co-operators:” to cooperate when others cooperate, and to defect when one expects others to defect. If a society is generally perceived as just and as giving everyone an equal opportunity to find a position in which they can develop their talents, this may induce individual members to behave cooperatively as well, for example, to keep contracts even when violations are unlikely to be detected. Thus, it seems fair to conclude that the burden of proof lies on those who challenge Durkheim's argument, and who can provide data that show its implausibility.