ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a detailed account of Emile Durkheim's theory of occupational corporations. It is concerned with the relationship between the Durkheimian theory of occupational groups and other theories in which guilds and corporations are assigned important ethical and political functions. In the treatise on the division of labor and other early writings the stress is more on the need to integrate people into some form of collective life capable of protecting them from pathological social currents. As for socialism, while he occasionally defended this doctrine from hostile criti-cisms, the general tone of these writings distanced him from orthodox socialism. An important source for an understanding of the development of Durkheim's thinking on occupational groups are the lectures he delivered on socialism during 1895-96. In attempting to determine the nature of Durkheim's theory of occupational groups, it is important to bear in mind the transformations that took place in this theory over time.
