ABSTRACT
Socialism is a better, a more intelligent organization of collective life whose aim and result would be to integrate individuals within social frameworks or communities invested with moral authority and capable of performing an educational function. According to Emile Durkheim's definition of socialism, then, the social question is above all a question of organization. But it is also a question of moralization. The conclusion of the lectures on socialism contains an interesting suggestion. Durkheim writes that at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were three roughly contemporaneous movements: the birth of sociology, an effort at religious revival, and the development of the socialist doctrines. Socialism is the realization of the moral and religious crisis on the one hand, of social disorganization on the other, and of the fact that the old political and spiritual powers are no longer suited to the nature of industrial society.
