Breaking down the question
The command word is compare, and the axis of comparison is specified: the framework of division of labour. A comparison is not two separate essays placed side by side; it is a single sustained argument that runs the two thinkers against each other on common points, drawing out both similarity and difference. The specified framework keeps the answer disciplined — every paragraph should bear on how each thinker understood the division of labour.
Both Marx and Durkheim made the division of labour central, and both saw it intensified by industrial capitalism — that is the shared ground. But they read it in opposite registers: for Marx it is a source of exploitation and alienation, a symptom of class society; for Durkheim it is the modern basis of solidarity, a source of cohesion. The examiner wants this divergence brought out clearly, along with the deeper difference in their whole sociologies that produces it.
A first-class answer names the points of comparison — origins, consequences, pathology, and remedy — and moves through them thinker by thinker, rather than describing Marx fully and then Durkheim fully. The structure should itself perform the comparison.
How to approach it
Open by establishing the common ground: both thinkers place the division of labour at the heart of their analysis of modern society, and both are responding to the industrial transformation of Europe. This shared starting point makes the contrast that follows meaningful.
Then compare along clear axes. On the nature and cause of the division of labour; on its consequences for the individual — Marx's alienation against Durkheim's individuation and interdependence; on its pathologies — Marx's exploitation and class conflict against Durkheim's anomic and forced division of labour; and on the remedy — revolution and the abolition of class against moral regulation and the strengthening of solidarity. The note on Marx's historical materialism and class and the profile of Emile Durkheim supply the two sides.
Close by locating the contrast in the wider divergence between conflict and consensus sociology, and offer a measured judgement rather than crowning a winner.
Model answer
Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim both made the division of labour a cornerstone of their sociology, and both were responding to the same upheaval — the industrial transformation of nineteenth-century Europe. That shared preoccupation is where their agreement ends. Where Marx saw in the division of labour a mechanism of exploitation and human self-estrangement, Durkheim saw the very foundation of solidarity in modern society. The comparison illuminates not only two readings of one phenomenon but the deep opposition between a conflict and a consensus vision of society.
The nature and origin of the division of labour. For Marx, the division of labour is inseparable from private property and class. As production develops, labour is divided not only technically but socially — between those who own the means of production and those who own only their labour power. The division of labour is thus, at root, a division into classes, and its history is the history of changing forms of exploitation. For Durkheim, by contrast, the division of labour is a social fact whose cause lies in rising "dynamic density" — the growing volume and intensity of social interaction as populations expand. It is a natural and moral development, not a mark of class antagonism.
Consequences for the individual. Here the contrast is sharpest. Marx argued that the capitalist division of labour alienates the worker — from the product of labour, from the act of production, from fellow workers, and from human species-being. Confined to a narrow, repetitive task and dispossessed of the fruits of work, the worker is dehumanised; the division of labour cripples the individual. Durkheim reached almost the opposite conclusion: the division of labour frees the individual, fostering individuality and, crucially, binding people together through mutual dependence. As tasks specialise, each person needs the others, and this interdependence generates organic solidarity — the moral cement of modern society, replacing the mechanical solidarity of likeness that held simpler societies together.
The pathological forms. Neither thinker was naive about industrial reality, but they named its ills differently. Durkheim recognised that the division of labour could go wrong, producing anomie — a lack of moral regulation between functions, seen in industrial conflict and economic crisis — and the forced division of labour, where external inequalities compel people into positions that do not match their talents. But for Durkheim these are abnormal forms, correctable deviations from a fundamentally healthy institution. For Marx, what Durkheim called pathology is the normal condition of the division of labour under capitalism: exploitation and class conflict are not malfunctions to be regulated away but the essence of the system, removable only by transforming it.
The remedy. The prescriptions follow from the diagnoses. Because Marx located the disease in the class structure itself, his cure is radical: the abolition of private property and class through proletarian revolution, ending the alienating division of labour and inaugurating a society in which individuals develop their full human capacities. Because Durkheim located the disease in insufficient moral regulation, his cure is reformist: strengthen the collective conscience and the regulatory institutions — he looked to occupational associations — so that organic solidarity can function properly. Marx would dissolve the existing order; Durkheim would heal it.
The underlying divergence. The contrast on the division of labour is a window onto the two men's whole sociologies. Marx works within a conflict paradigm: society is riven by antagonistic interests, and the division of labour expresses domination. Durkheim works within a consensus paradigm: society is a moral order held together by shared sentiments and functional interdependence, and the division of labour is its modern integrating force. One sees a wound where the other sees a bond.
Assessment. The comparison need not end in a verdict for one thinker. Marx is the more penetrating on power, exploitation, and the human costs of industrial specialisation; Durkheim is the more illuminating on how a complex, differentiated society nonetheless holds together. Read together, they map the two faces of the modern division of labour — its capacity both to divide people into unequal classes and to bind them into mutual dependence. That the same institution can be theorised as the source of alienation and as the source of solidarity is itself a measure of its centrality to modern life.
Examiner's perspective
The structural error that costs the most marks is writing two mini-essays — Marx, then Durkheim — with no genuine comparison between them. The mark scheme rewards an integrated treatment that runs the thinkers against each other on common points; the axes of origin, consequence, pathology, and remedy provide exactly that scaffolding.
Examiners look for the central antithesis stated with precision: alienation versus solidarity, mechanical and organic solidarity correctly distinguished, and the difference between Durkheim's abnormal forms and Marx's view that exploitation is the normal state of the capitalist division of labour. Muddling anomie with alienation, a frequent slip, marks a candidate down.
The best scripts lift the comparison from the specific to the paradigmatic — showing that the disagreement over the division of labour embodies the larger conflict-versus-consensus split in sociology — and resist the temptation to declare a winner, closing instead with a balanced judgement on what each thinker sees that the other misses.