• DOI:10.1111/j.1467-954X.1960.tb01034.x
• Corpus ID: 144318188

Solidarist Syndicalism: Durkheim and Duguit

@article{Hayward1960SolidaristSD,
  title={Solidarist Syndicalism: Durkheim and Duguit},
  author={J. E. S. Hayward},
  journal={The Sociological Review},
  year={1960},
  volume={8},
  pages={185 - 202}
}

• J. Hayward
• Published 1 December 1960
• Law
• The Sociological Review

I f it is accurate to apply to Durkheim, Gaston Richard's assenion: 'As soon as the sociologist abandons the consideration of societies for that of the universal societ}' of minds, and group solidarities for the solidarity of men in space and time, he is philosophising,' Leon Duguit's critical and constructive, sociology-centred jurisprudence based upon the normative fact of social solidarity as the source of all legal obligation, fits this implied criticism. For all his pretensions to a radically empirical positivism, excluding all subjective metaphysical postulates, his writings were philosophical rather than scientific in character.' Whereas Durkheim succumbed to the attractions of Paris, Duguit, a native of the Gironde, refused all invitations from the Paris 'Facutte de Droit' and taught (from 1886 until his death in 1928; at Bordeaux University. This was a practical manifestation of his intransigent hostility to the centralisation in the capital of all that was best in France. This opposition to the allabsorbing state was counter-balanced by his hostility towards anarchic individualism, the second of the warring twins engendered by the Rousseauist philosophy of the French Revolution. This doctrine juxtaposed the absolute, one and indivisible sovereign state's metaphysical general will and the imprescriptable and intangible rights of each subjective individual will. The rejection of both statist socialism and Revolutionary individualism was coupled with the ardent advocacy of a Uberal-socialist pluralism or, as Duguit described it in 1848 style, 'Associalionisyn, i.e. a stx;ial state where individual energies, free from the tyrannical tutelage of the State, masters of themselves, will be enlightened, guided and protected by associations based upon a community of needs and interests,''