ABSTRACT
Emile Durkheim's review of Ferdinand Toennies's Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, which appeared in the Revue Philosophique in 1889, is one of the earliest and most competent reviews of that book. Both men emphasized the need of any society for "solidarity" and "affirmative social relations". Both were concerned about the crisis of Western civilization. Both regretted the corrosion of earlier forms of Gemeinschaft and the weakening of "les forces intermédiaires" within the social structure, leaving only the detached individual and the super state on the scene. However, they were far from being reactionaries; they had no thought of arguing for a return to what they were convinced was past and gone forever. But there the similarity ends. Pitirim Sorokin—to mention only one author of many—is wrong when he asserts that Gemeinschaft is identical with "mechanical solidarity" and Gesellschaft with "organic solidarity" and that the terms are merely reversed.
