Durkheim saw capitalist competition weakening the social constraints that bind individuals.

Evidence

Despite appearances, then, Durkheim belonged to the neo-Kantian tradition. “Noumenal” reality had to be studied through its forms of appearance—through “phenomenal” reality. Two related concerns served to inflect this neo-Kantian position in rather different directions—leading to what can only be described as “two” Durkheims. The first was a classic concern with the nature, degree, and types of social solidarity. He followed earlier theorists here in believing that the bonds of social solidarity had been immensely weakened in societies of individual competition (i.e., capitalist market societies). This weakening was, precisely, to be seen in the loosening of the constraining power of “the rules” over individual behavior. The condition, typical of such societies, in which actions were insufficiently “ruled” by norms, he called anomic . This is the classic terrain of positivist sociology; and to it Durkheim devoted some of his major work, including The Division of Labour , Suicide , and The Rules of Sociological Method . It was this Durkheim which American sociology appropriated. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 354

Categorization

• XREF: Durkheim’s anomie as loosened rule-constraint in market societies echoes the reader’s earlier notes on alienated labor and on how market relations erode communal bonds — aligns with Fromm’s social character studies and the Frankfurt group-experiment findings.
• DEFINE: Defines ‘anomie’ precisely as insufficiently rule-governed action in competitive societies.
• QUESTION: Hall says ‘two Durkheims’ but the passage develops only the first (solidarity/anomie); worth chasing what the second inflecting concern is in his later work.