FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS 273
It may be true, for example, that all modern societies are and
will be characterized by structures that fulfill the functions commonly
assigned to bureaucracies, whatever one may call them.
Nevertheless, there are still differences between modern societies
which are important, and these differences are not adequately conceptualized
by terms like " subsystem autonomy. " The Soviet
Union may be a modern political system and a one party regime.
It is also a socialist society. There can be but little question that
the nature of the economic system has important consequences for
political institutions, and that the politics of equally modern neocapitalist
and socialist societies will take different forms. The study
of these problems has been relatively neglected in recent years. They
remain crucial to our understanding of comparative politics, as
well as to our ability to confront some of the problems with which
we shall be faced in the fairly near future.
One final issue remains to be discussed. In recent years a widespread
attack has been raised against functionalism in sociology and
the whole behavioral tradition in political science (of which functionalism
is usually considered part) which goes well beyond some
of the criticisms I have already elaborated. 90 A good deal of the
criticism is highly rhetorical and does not readily lend itself to systematic
analysis. However, in much of it behavioralism and functionalism
are accused of being conservative because they draw their
image of man and his behavior from a highly corrupt contemporary
society. Assuming contemporary behavior is natural, they refuse to
use the facts for a leap of utopian speculation which would permit
th emergence of new forms of social organization which are freer,
more spontaneous and less characterized by " repressive " authority.
90 The literature is becoming fairly substantial in sociology and political
science. In the latter field the criticism of functionalism is generally part of a
general criticism of the " behavioral " approach. Some representative works
include: Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology ( New
York, 1970): Henry Kariel (ed.), Frontiers of Democratic Theory ( New
York, 1970), Marvin Surkin and Alan Wolfe (eds.), An End to Political
Science (New York, 1970), Philip Green and Sanford Levinson (eds.), Power
and Community: Dissenting Essays in Political Science (New York, 1970),
and the McCoy and Playford volume already cited. See also Henry Kariel,
" Expanding the Political Present, " The American Political Science Review 63
( September, 1969), pp. 768-776, and Sheldon Wolin, " Political Theory as a
Vocation," The American Political Science Review 63 December, 1969), pp.
1062-1082.