FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS 275
elite. 94
Such predictions and explanations, deriving as they do from
functional and structural imperatives, seem rather more reasonable
than the simplistic notions of betrayal by which some utopians, at
least, attempt to explain the failure of all past efforts to usher in
the millenium.
If one, then, is to convince reasonable men that transcendence
is more than merely possible, one must develop a conceptual framework
and theories which stand the test of all empirical theories. The
creators of such frameworks and theories will have to demonstrate
that they enable us to organize data about the present and past
roughly as efficiently as alternate models, and that they are more
fruitful with regard to new discoveries. Marx certainly realized
this. Most of his adult life was dedicated to the attempt to construct
a model of man and history which would demonstrate, on
just these grounds, the probability of a future society which
would maximize human freedom. Those who would make use of
the philosophic " existential " Marx, while ignoring or rejecting the
mature theory would have received little sympathy from him. Very
few radical theorists have attempted anything like a comparable
task, and the efforts of those who have tried, such as Marcuse, Bay,
Gouldner or Moore seem less than convincing. 95
At least some of the new set of radical critics would refuse to
accept this task. The argument seems to be as follows: All social
science begins with value assumptions, in Gouldner's terms " background
" and " domain " assumptions. We, then, are free to choose
our own and proceed from there. The only requirement is that we
must be aware of the assumptions from which we start. 99
I would assert the contrary. Unless we assume that disagreements
about political-moral questions stem from constitutional
94
Stanley Rothman, "One Party Regimes ..., op. cit.
95
Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization ( Boston, 1955), One Dimensional
Man ( Boston, 1964), Christian Bay, The Structure of Freedom (New York,
1965), and other works cited above; Gouldner, op. cit., and Barrington Moore,
Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston, 1966). For
critiques, see Alasdair MacIntyre, Herbert Marcuse ( New York, 1970), Stanley
Rothman, "Barrington Moore and the Dialectics of Revolution: An Essay
Review, " The American Political Science Review 64 (March, 1970), pp.
" "
Objectivity, Commentary 50 (December, 1970),
61-82. Stanley Rothman,
pp. 95-97 represents a critique of Gouldner, and R. S. Peters, The Concept
of Motivation (London, 1958) offers a short but devastating critique of
Abraham Maslow, upon whom Bay builds much of his theorizing.
"Gouldner, op. cit.