Robert K. Merton's "Dream Machine"
An Explication of Merton's
"Social Structure and Anomie" (1938)
Another functionalist argument is that crime is required for social progress. Thus Durkheim argues that a society must not be overly repressive: it must provide enough freedom of action for the criminal to behave in ways that hurt it, in order to give enough space for the "genius" to act in ways that benefit it. One step ahead of the rest of us, the genius develops new and progressive ways of living; thus a society lacking tolerance of such behavior will be a stagnant one.
Because both of their acts defy normal expectations, however, the acts of the genius may be hard to tell apart from the criminal. Durkheim asks whether Socrates was in fact a "corrupter of the youth of Athens" by teaching them to rethink convention, as he was charged in his day... or was he instead furthering the development of civilization? Similarly, we might ask whether the civil disobedience of Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists for civil rights in the United States was criminal, as many charged at the time... or instead challenging the United States to rethink its social structure? In our own day, is the so-called "Dr. Death," Jack Kevorkian, committing murder by enabling physician assisted suicide... or leading us to a more humane standard of our society, as he and his supporters claim (“When society reaches the age of enlightenment, then they’ll call me and other doctors Dr. Life”)? Durkheim might argue that only time will tell.