Anthony Giddens - Commentary on the Debate.pdf

Commentary on the DebateAuthor(s): Anthony GiddensSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jul., 1982), pp. 527-539Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657106 .Accessed: 02/07/2014 05:40

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527

COMMENTARY ON THE DEBATE

ANTHONY GIDDENS

This is not an easy debate upon which to comment, for each of the articles in some part sidesteps the chief concerns of the others.' Jon Elster's article, which is a substantial one, refers to "Marxism" in its title and in sections of its discussion. But, so far as I can see, Elster's critique of functionalism and his advocacy of game theory have no necessary relation to Marxism. He may appeal to a range of examples drawn from Marxist thought, but there is nothing in what he says that could not be applied across the whole range of the social sciences, Marxist and non-Marxist. Cohen's "Reply," on the other hand, which is relatively slight, is specifically located within the terms of an interpretation of historical materialism. He barely addresses at all the question of methodological individualism, which is, however, basic to Elster's article. The contribution from Berger and Offe - also brief when compared to the detail of Elster's analysis - is concerned to rebut methodological individualism, but has little to say about Marxism in a direct way.

Let me state at the outset where my sympathies lie in this rather tangled net- work of argument and counter-argument, and then develop my views at greater length. I agree with most of the elements of Elster's critique of functionalism, and I take as radical a stance as he does in suggesting that functionalist notions should be excluded altogether from the social sciences. I do not think, however, that abandoning functionalism (in its various versions and guises) entails embracing methodological individualism; and I consider the scope of game theory in social science to be considerably more limited than Elster does. I do not believe that Marx was as consistent and coherent a writer as Cohen appears to claim. Consequently, although the exposition of historical materialism, as logically linked to a conception of "functional explanation," which Cohen offers is textually plausible, it is by no means the only way in which "historical materialism" can be understood.2 If, however, this is what "historical materialism" means, then so much the worse for historical materialism - or so I shall aver. In discussing these issues, I shall distinguish three

Social Sciences, King's College, Cambridge University.


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sets of problems. First: How should the critique of functionalism be ap- proached (a question that, as Elster and Berger and Offe acknowledge, must consider the various contexts in which functionalist concepts appear)? Second: If functionalist concepts are eschewed, what sort of notions should replace them? Third: How should we assess the validity of "historical materialism" in social theory today?

Functionalism and Its Critique

One of the attractions of Elster's article - as with his books and other analy- ses to which it is closely related3 - is the diversity of sources in which he dis- covers the use of functional analysis. Some of his examples are of unlikely provenance, but perhaps for that reason are all the more telling; E.P. Thomp- son, for instance, would hardly be the type of writer ordinarily associated with the use of functionalist notions. Elster distinguishes three types of functionalism. The first type, the 'weak functionalist paradigm," seems to me, however, logically unobjectionable, and probably not worth regarding as a form of functionalism at all. For it simply states that a pattern of behavior may have consequences which, although unintended and unforseen by those initiating that pattern of behavior, confer some benefits for them (and/or others). I do not think there is any logical difficulty with this idea, although what "benefit" means might be argued about, and it has to be conjoined to recognition of "counterfinality."

What Elster labels the "strong functionalist paradigm" is also in a certain sense a misnomer, for it is a position that few have ever held, its weaknesses being rather apparent. It is the view that all patterns of behavior have a function, this explaining why they exist in the first place. According to Elster, the strong functionalist paradigm is "flourishing" in areas of Marxist and radical social science. He seems to have in mind writers such as Althusser and Pou- lantzas when he says this, but this is surely rather unfair. Functionalist notions are plain to see in their writings, but each also emphasizes that social systems embody contradictions. If these authors - and various of the others mentioned by Elster - do not fit readily into his 'main functional paradigm" (the third type), this is because a further distinction needs to be made among the forms of functionalism. This is between those, like Althusser and Pou- lantzas, who make frequent recourse to functionalist concepts while refusing to associate themselves formally with "functionalism"; and those on the other hand who openly declare themselves either to be "functionalists," or who recognize functional explanation as a legitimate procedure in the social sciences. The difference is an important one. Elster does a valuable job in indicating how widespread "covert functionalism" is. But this is at the same


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time rather easy meat. For many authors who have devoted some attention to spelling out the logical implications of functional analysis have been alert to the main point Elster stresses: that the unintended/unanticipated consequences of an item or form of social conduct do not explain its existence. This has been recognized both by contributors to the "early" functionalist debate of the 1950s and 1960s (such as Hempel4), as well as by those who have defended forms of functionalism in recent times (such as Sztompkas or Luh- mann6

- to the latter of whom Berger and Offe make reference).

If I may - tongue in cheek - borrow some terminology used by Lakatos in a different context,7 we should differentiate between "naive overt functionalism" and "sophisticated overt functionalism." In spite of his importance to the development of functionalism, RK. Merton has to be categorized as a "naive overt functionalist." Consider one of the illustrations he offers in his famous discussion of functional analysis in Social Theory and Social Struc- ture: the Hopi Rain Dance.8 The existence (or persistence) of the Hopi Rain Ceremonial, Merton says, at first sight seems opaque to the sociological ob- server. The "manifest function," or purpose, for which its exists - to bring rain - is not achieved. The ceremonial does not bring rain. However, we can explain the existence/persistence of the Rain Dance by means of its latent function. The latent function of the ceremonial is that "of reinforcing the group identity by providing a periodic occasion on which the scattered mem- bers of a group assemble to engage in a common activity. As Durkheim among others long since indicated, such ceremonials are a means by which collective expression is afforded the sentiments which, in a further analysis, are found to be a basic source of group unity."9 To indicate that the Rain Dance is a "source of group unity" shows nothing about why it came into existence in the first place, or why it persists once instituted. Elster is entirely right to argue that, in such an example - as in the several comparable ones he cites - the postulated consequence of the activity, i.e. "group unity," does not explain the presence of the activity.

But sophisticated overt functionalists do not make this error. They accept that "functional explanation" entails demonstrating some sort of "mechanism" - or, if one prefers, set of causal conditions - whereby the consequence of a social practice is shown to react back on that practice. "Functional explanations" then take the form of demonstrating feedback loops in social systems, where the character of the feedback mechanism is specified. Elster in fact concedes the validity of functional explanation thus conceived, calling this "teleonomy," although he apparently only recognizes one type of causal mechanism, "a natural selection model." The trouble with sophisticated overt functionalism is that it is often very difficult to specify the causal mechanism.


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Naive functionalism - overt or covert - is less demanding. Berger and Offe, and Cohen, admit this, and point to its dangers. In their replies, they each propose ways in which the rigor of sophisticated functionalism may be ap- proximated to, even where the causal mechanisms involved are not known. Neither of their approaches, however, as expressed by them, is in my view satisfactory.

Berger and Offe adopt Luhmann's notion of "functional equivalence."10 In analyzing a given social phenomenon, we defer the question of what causes that phenomenon to exist (Berger and Offe misleadingly say that "we are no longer interested" in this). We ask first of all: what other circumstances could, hypothetically, replace that phenomenon within a social system? We can then begin to move towards an analysis of the conditions that govern the existence of the phenomenon in question. Their own example concerns the following proposition: "the state . .. has the function of maintaining the conditions of capital accumulation." This is not, they say, an explanatory statement, as it stands at least. It is, as it were, a mode of approach to the analysis of the interdependencies involved in societies or social systems. Now there is a sense, as I shall argue shortly, in which a view somewhat similar to theirs can be defended. But there is no necessity, in my opinion, to couch this view in functionalist language: indeed, it can be positively misleading to do so. Moreover, we need to specify more clearly what "self-regulating mechanisms" are; and again we have no need to use functionalist terminology to do this.

Cohen, like Berger and Offe, adopts a sophisticated overt functionalism. He has an interesting suggestion about what the sophisticated overt functionalist should do if he or she cannot identify the causal conditions involved in the connections between social items to be explained. If we do not know these conditions, we need not relapse into a vacuous naive functionalism. Instead, we can seek to establish "consequence laws": these are generalizations which show that, whenever a given social item would be functional for another, the first social item is found to exist. Subsumption of a particular instance under a consequence law counts as an "unelaborated" functionalist explanation. I think Elster is right to doubt whether such a formulation counts as an explanation at all. Of course, this depends in some considerable part on what "explanation" is understood to be. A "consequence law" is at best, as Cohen agrees, a preliminary orientation to a subject matter, an adequate analysis of which demands further explanatory work. Cohen's formulation thus in this respect resembles the view of Berger and Offe. One might say that, in each case, their functionalist orientation indicates phenomena that call for explanation, rather than being explained by the conceptions they offer.


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I think it is possible to disabuse ourselves of functionalist concepts while recognizing that sophisticated functionalism does not fall prey to the critique Elster offers. There are three types of circumstance in which functionalist language is commonly used: each forms a legitimate part or aspect of the methodological apparatus of social science, but each is also expressed more un- ambiguously by stripping away functionalist terminology. I shall use as an illustration the statement of Berger and Offe: "the state ... has the function of maintaining the conditions of capital accumulation." 1) Such a proposition is acceptable if understood as an implicit counterfactual. Many functionalist "assertions" or "generalizations" can in fact be read in this way. They call for explanations, they do not provide them. Let me express this statement in another way (which does not use the term "function"). We can say: "in order for capital accumulation to be maintained, the state has to intervene in defi- nite ways in economic life." The force of "has to" here is counterfactual: it involves identifying conditions that must be met if certain consequences are to follow. It supplies us with a preliminary orientation to a problem, and the posing of such questions can perfectly legitimately be defended as an integral part of the social sciences. But it is best to avoid using the term "function," because of its misleading implications in such a context. For it suggests that the "has to" in the above sentence refers to some sort of need that is a prop- erty of the social system - in which case we have an example of naive overt functionalism. 2) Suppose we specify a "mechanism," or set of causal conditions relevant to showing how it comes about that the state intervenes in economic life in such a way as to sustain capital accumulation. Here there is still another ambiguity that the concept of "function" helps to create. To say "the state has the function of maintaining the conditions of capital accumulation" fudges over the difference between intended and unintended circumstances of system reproduction. Most functionalist authors, naive or sophisticated, give short shrift to intentional or purposive action-for reasons I shall discuss shortly. They identify functional analysis with the discerning of "latent functions." When sophisticated overt functionalists talk of "causal conditions," or of "mechanisms," they often have in mind processes that happen "mechanically" - like events in nature. Now feedback loops can be identified that can be treated more or less in such terms: in other words, that are the outcome of unintended consequences of action. For example, as a result of certain policies designed by state officials to avoid traumatic fluctua- tions in the business cycle, an unintended consequence might be to promote capital accumulation. There are no logical difficulties involved in conceptualiz- ing such "self-regulating mechanisms." 3) But we should also recognize the significance of "reflexive self-regulation.""1 This refers to circumstances in which, to use the words of Berger and Offe, "the function has been anticipa- ted by strategic actors who at the same time have reasons and means" to


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create the conditions for its realization. There are obviously a complex range of shadings between homeostatic loops of type 2 and feedback influenced by reflexive self-regulation. But it is hardly possible to deny that reflexive self- regulation becomes an increasingly important phenomenon in contemporary societies. It is also a phenomenon that concerns an issue that none of the articles mentions: the involvement of social science with its own "subject matter," human societies. Functionalism, and more particularly systems theory, has become increasingly incorporated into the conditions of societal reproduction and transformation.

Game Theory, Structure, Action

Having rejected functionalism, Elster makes a strong case for making game theory central to social science, coupling this to methodological individualism. Methodological individualism is "the doctrine that all social phenomena - their structure and their change - are in principle explicable only in terms of individuals - their properties, goals and beliefs." Because functionalist concepts have no place in the social sciences, the proper arena of concern for social science is "a mixed causal-intentional explanation - intentional under- standing of the individual actions and causal explanation of their interaction." Elster's enthusiasm for game theory is infectious; his article and recent books come as a refreshing change from the stodgy diet of naive covert functionalism that has tended of late to be prominently represented in the litera- ture of the social sciences. I imagine that he would not claim there is anything particularly new in the game-theoretical examples he discusses; but it certainly is unusual to insert them into the traditional arenas of Marxism. And surely his discussion is provocative, especially for those who have swallowed too much of the aforementioned diet, and whose conceptual digestions have become blocked up as a result. Game theory offers the following advantages compared to functionalism in all its forms. It places an emphasis upon purposive, rational action; human beings do not appear as the playthings of forces beyond their control. It allows for the recognition that the unintended consequences of action may stand in diverse relations to the intentions of individual actors. And it allows for theoretical models of some elegance when compared to many other forms of approach in the social sciences.

These things having been said, I am puzzled by the scope Elster attributes to game theory in social science, and by his insistence on methodological individualism which, in the context of his article at least, appears merely dogmatic. Surely some of the main difficulties with, and limitations of, game theory are well known. Its formal elegance is often a bit specious, because the assumptions game-theoretical models imply (usually, that some sort of conscious eval-


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uation between alternatives is made by actors; that they apply certain criteria of rationality in pursuing courses of action; that they have rather clear goals in undertaking such courses of action; and that they evaluate and "decide" about which among several alternative strategies to pursue in reaching their ends) are not all that commonly fulfilled in actual circumstances of social life. Moreover, the examples or applications of game theory Elster offers occasion- ally seem a roundabout way of reaching conclusions that are well known. That "more harm than good sometimes ensues from heroic acts of revolt or disobedience, if others are not willing to follow suit" is hardly news to most political activists. A far richer discussion of its implications that anything game theory is likely to yield is to be found in Weber's analysis of the "politics of responsibility," versus a "politics of ultimate ends."

Consider the illustration Elster discusses in some detail, and for which he makes his strongest claims: the model of "double-time dependence" of bar- gaining derived from Lancaster. After several pages of analysis, it turns out that the empirical derivations of the model, as they are explicated by Lancas- ter at least, "depend too heavily on the specific assumptions of the model to be of great interest." The model is chiefly important for its conceptual implications. In fact, Elster says, it represents "an important conceptual breakthrough for the way in which we think about exploitation, power and capitalism." What does this "conceptual breakthrough" consist in? It consists in the demonstration that the exploitation of the working class is to be found not just in the appropriation of surplus value by employers, but in the exclu- sion of the workers from investment policy decisions. But this conclusion does not seem at all novel, let alone a breakthrough. Elster then goes on to add the observation that we can therefore accept Dahrendorfs thesis that, in the liberal democratic capitalist countries, "power rather than wealth is the crux of the class struggle." This is a strange endorsement to make, however, for one who is supposedly elaborating a Marxist class theory. For Dahrendorf specifically breaks with Marx, and with Marxism more generally, in his reform- ulation of the concept of class; he holds that "capitalism" was a transitory phase in the development of the European societies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, superseded today; and he expressly denies that a radical socialist transformation of "post-capitalist" societies is feasible for the future.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. A diet of game theory might be tasty at first sitting, but might also turn out to be as unwholesome, as a staple Food, as the various types of functionalism referred to previously. We shall have to wait and see what concrete use Elster or others are able to make of game theory. Providing a range of examples of the application of game theory


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is different from pursuing substantive sociological or historical problems in depth. In this respect I feel strongly in accord with Berger and Offe's observation that "methodological debates remain unsound as long as they remain strictly methodological." In my opinion, this comment is relevant to Cohen's reply (and his book), too, as I shall indicate in the third section of my discussion. Elster consistently opposes game theory in particular, and methodological individualism more generally, on the one side to functionalism and to structuralism on the other. One of his claims is that the former two of these can provide an analysis of the "microfoundations of Marxist [why only Mar- xist?] social theory," providing "knowledge about the mechanisms that oper- ate at the individual level." He also consistently opposes "action" (by which he seems to mean only "strategic" activity, conforming to the assumptions of game theory I noted above) to "structural constraint." "Structure" seems to be understood by him solely as sources of constraint or limitation on action thus defined. Much the same antinomy appears to be accepted by Cohen, save that he takes sides differently. "Marxism," Cohen says, "is fundamentally concerned not with behavior [action?], but with the forces and relations constraining and directing it." Neither Elster's view, nor that of Cohen, seems to me acceptable here. Each recapitulates a methodological dualism - between action and structure - that has hampered social theory for a long while.

Several objections can be made against methodological individualism such as Elster formulates it. These in some part center on the notion of "structure." Elster only considers one criticism of methodological individualism, that made by Charles Taylor. Taylor holds that "common meanings" or "intersubjective meanings" cannot be satisfactorily conceptualized by anyone adopting the standpoint of methodological individualism. I think this is right, although it is not expressed in the most felicitous way; and Taylor does his own cause a disservice by merging the point with the claim that methodological individual- ists cannot cope with "a subject who can be a 'we' as well as an 'I'." Elster is able to rebut the latter claim rather easily. But the stronger part of Taylor's argument concerns "common/intersubjective meanings." "Meaning" is not really the appropriate term to use here. I should prefer instead to speak of the structural properties of languages, communities, or social systems, where "structure" is understood as rules and resources in the mode I have elucidated in detail elsewhere.'2 The structural properties of linguistic or social systems cannot be expressed as qualities or descriptions of the conduct of either individual or collective agents. Syntactical rules, for example, are not attributes of individual speakers, speech acts, or of texts. They are instantiated in, and reproduced through, speech and writing, but that is something different.


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"Structure" here admittedly is used in a divergent sense from that character- istically employed in the social sciences. But I consider this a highly important conceptual move, for it is the condition of escaping the dualism I have referred to. All of the contributors to the current debate are apparently content to equate structure, or the structural properties of social systems, with constraint. The action of individuals can then only be conceptualized as occurring in whatever space is left over from the operation of such constraint. The shortcomings of such a standpoint surely do not have to be spelled out at any length. Those who favor the sort of stance Elster takes find great difficulty in recognizing the point stressed by Berger and Offe: in game theory, "the game starts only after the actors have been constituted, and their order of preferences has been formed as a result of processes that cannot themselves be considered as being part of the game." Those who take a position like that of Cohen find it hard to see human actors as anything more than the dupes of influences they neither understand nor control. Cohen acknowledges that "as it were, action is needed to bring things about," but his development of this proposition is a distinctly odd one. Functionalism, he seems to imply, in which human activity is regarded as determined by structural forces, works in circumstances of relative social stability; but when the objective conditions for revolutionary change have come about, a space for action appears.

Such dubious conceptions can be avoided if we see that structure is both en- abling and constraining. This entails elaborating some such notion as that which I call the duality of structure. By the duality of structure, I mean that structure is recursively implicated in conduct, the medium, and the outcome of the mix of intended and unintended outcomes that human beings create in their interaction with one another.13 Structure is to be conceived not merely as an impediment to action, but as involved in a complex way with what "action" is.

Formulating a theory of action in the social sciences demands theorizing the human agent. This is the basis of a further objection I would make against El- ster's methodological individualism. The "individual," he seems to hold, can be treated in social theory as the rational, calculative actor posited in game theory. Such a conception of the "individual," and his or her modes of "action," are as limited as are the contexts of social activity in which game-theoretical models have some relevance. As I have indicated earlier, these contexts are mostly ones in which courses of action are consciously weighed and strategic choices made between them. Game theory is not at all well equipped to deal with the duree of day-to-day social activity as a whole, in which such circumstances pertain only sporadically. The dure'e of human action does pre- suppose intentionality, but for the most part this operates on the level of


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"practical consciousness" - which is not a matter of deliberated processes of decision-making, but rather a routine "monitoring" of the grounds of conduct in the everyday enactment of social life.14

The Status of Historical Materialism

Most of these considerations so far do not have a great deal to do intrinsically with Marxism or with "historical materialism." The use of game theory to in- terpret Marxist concepts may very well be fruitful, within the limitations I have just indicated. However, I certainly agree with Cohen that game theory is unlikely to lead us radically to recast Marxist thought; and it is Cohen's discussion of historical materialism, or aspects of it, with which I shall be prima- rily concerned in this closing section. Cohen says that he comes not just to explicate historical materialism, but to defend it: indeed, the title of the book from which his paper is drawn is Karl Marx's Theory of History, a Defence.15

Cohen's defense of Marx is based on three main ideas - each of which I think to be in fact either questionable or mistaken. These ideas are: 1) "history" is above all to be understood in terms of the expansion of the material productive forces; 2) types of society come into being and are superseded according to the ways in which they foster or impede that expansion; 3) functional analysis, appropriately explicated, is logically necessary to the interpretation of points 1 and 3 in historical materialism. The most famous few lines in Marx, from the 1859 Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of PoliticalEconomy, are used in the reply by Cohen to seek to demonstrate these points. Cohen is a sophisticated overt functionalist. He did not, however, start off as one. He began as a sophisticated overt Marxist, and this led him to functionalism, because in his view, functional analysis is the only way of making historical materialism consistent. "Historical materialism" here, however, has to be distin- guished from Marx's own writings. I am not at all persuaded that Cohen's formulation of historical materialism is the only coherent one that can be given. Certainly forms of naive functionalism can be readily found in Marx's writings, as some of the texts by Elster attest. I do not think that these obser- vations are irrelevant to Cohen's analysis, because (as against his search for a single, consistent conception of historical materialism that Marxists "must" be committed to) it could be argued that the inconsistencies, ambiguities, and only partly formed theories in Marx's writings are the source of the renewed inspiration that different generations have found therein. A variety of con- trasting conceptions can be developed from them.


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Be that as it may, Cohen insists there is only one way of (coherently) inter- preting historical materialism, so I shall mention some of the main reserva- tions I have about his particular account. I have already commented on aspects of his version of functionalism. I do not think his "consequence laws" have the logical force he attributes to them. But he also has another strand to his argument. Historical materialism today, he says, can usefully be compared to the position of evolutionary theory before Darwin came along. Before Dar- win, there was a large amount of accumulated evidence indicating that evolutionary adaptation is the basis of the differentiation of the species. Writers before Darwin were justified in believing that "the useful characters of orga- nisms are there because they are useful." This formed an "unelaborated functionalist explanation," which Darwin was able to complete through his discov- ery of the mechanism of natural selection. One might cavil at the historical accuracy of such a characterization: after all, Darwin devoted enormous labor to categorizing the species on an evolutionary scale, and this was a fundamen- tal part of his achievement. However, the main point is the analogy with the social sciences, or with historical materialism. Historical materialism is, "at best," Cohen says, in a similar situation to evolutionary biology before the advent of Darwin. When prodded by Elster, he retires a little further: perhaps historical materialism has not even got to a stage comparable to pre-Darwi- nian natural history. Historical materialism still awaits its Linnaeus, let alone its Darwin!

Cohen might feel driven to such a position by the logic of his arguments, but it is a peculiarly unsatisfactory one. Marxism, after all, is as old as Darwinian evolutionism; Marx and Engels considered that they had produced a parallel transformation of history to that accomplished by Darwin in biology. In this assessment, as Cohen would have to say, they might have been quite wrong. But there is actually a wealth of historical evidence relevant to the claims of historical materialism as posited by Cohen. He does not consider such evidence at all, either in his paper or in his book. His "defense" is a wholly internal- ist one: the demonstration that a consistent and logically sound interpretation can be put together from Marx's outline of his materialist conception of history. But just as his "consequence laws" are only a preliminary to functionalist explanation, so a logical articulation of historical materialism is no more than a preliminary to a defense of it. For historical materialism amounts to nothing if it does not provide a plausible ordering of historical materials.

We have today a much greater range of historical and anthropological sources to draw on than Marx had at his disposal. I have discussed some of these sources in my book, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism.16 My conclusions are that neither 1 nor 2 of the ideas linked by Cohen to histo-


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rical materialism is defensible. "History" - if this means the long-term history of the variety of human cultures about which we have some reliable docu- mentation - cannot be comprised within any evolutionary scheme, let alone one that invokes as its primary basis the expansion of productive forces. About point 2 it has to be accepted that no "single factor" theory of major processes of transition between types of society can be justified. The accumulation of "surplus," or growth of productive forces more generally, are among the least persuasive of such single factor theories. Point 1 is simply an inaccu- rate portrayal of human history. It has been demonstrated beyond any reason- able doubt, by both archaeologists and anthropologists, that many hunting and gathering societies - the societies in which humankind has lived for all but a small fraction of its existence - have been well able to "expand the forces of production." But they have not been interested in or concerned with doing so.

These considerations strongly imply that historical materialism, in anything close to the form in which Cohen describes it, should be abandoned. Such is my opinion, at any rate. But this does not mean discarding Marx's writings in toto. Marx's conception of the economic conditions of capitalist enterprise, and of the class relations of capitalist societies, are of enduring importance. But these can be drawn on to support a discontinuist interpretation of history rather than an evolutionary one. By a "discontinuist interpretation," I mean one that focuses on the radical social transformations which capitalism, particularly industrial capitalism, has produced as compared to pre-existing forms of society.'7 Abandoning historical materialism already has major implications for Marxist theory, and I think there are several other quite fundamen- tal respects in which Left political theory has to be recast in the contemporary era. I doubt whether game theory will be a great deal of help in such an en- deavor, but it does seem to me that Elster seeks to use Marxist thought in a creative way, without bothering too much about old dogmas. Other considerations apart, this leads me to have a stronger sympathy with his work than with Cohen's more scholastic approach.

NOTES 1. This exchange is a continuation of an interchange between Elster and Cohen refer-

red to in fn. 5 of Elster's article (Political Studies, 28 (1980)). 2. See my Central Problems in Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1979), Chap. 4. 3. Jon Elster, Logic and Society (Chichester: Wiley, 1978); Ulysses and the Sirens

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and the interchanges referred to in fn. 5 of his article.

4. Carl. G. Hempel, "The Logic of Functional Analysis," in Aspects of Scientific Ex- planation (New York: Free Press, 1965).

5. Piotr Sztompka, System and Function (New York: Academic Press, 1974).


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6. Niklas Luhmann, "Funktion und Kausalitat," in Soziologische Aufklirung (Opla- den: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1972). 7. Imre Lakatos, "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Program-

mes," in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 8. Robert K. Merton, "Manifest and Latent Functions," in Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1963). I have discussed this example in more detailed fashion in Central Problems, 10-16. Cohen also refers to it in Karl Marx's Theory of History, a Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), Chap. 9. 9. Merton, 64-65.

10. Although their argument oversimplifies Luhmann's position. Cf. Luhmann. 11. Cf. Central Problems, 78, where I made a rather more complicated differentiation of types of system reproduction. Cohen makes some brief relevant remarks in his book, 287-9.

12. Central Problems. 13. Cf. Roy Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism (Brighton: Harvest, 1979). 14. See my New Rules of Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson, 1976), 81-86

and passim. 15. In an addition to the second impression of the book (1979) he excepts certain

chapters from this claim. 16. Anthony Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (London:

Macmillan, 1981). 17. Ibid., Chap. 3.

Editors' note: The Van Parijs and Roemer articles were not available to professor Giddens when he wrote this commentary.

Theory and Society 11 (1982) 527-539 0304-2421/82/0000-0000/$02.75 ? 1982 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company


Article Contentsp. 527p. 528p. 529p. 530p. 531p. 532p. 533p. 534p. 535p. 536p. 537p. 538p. 539

Issue Table of ContentsTheory and Society, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Jul., 1982), pp. 423-586Front Matter [pp. 452 - 554]Art in the Arms of Power: Market Relations and Collective Patronage in the Capitalist State [pp. 423 - 451]Marxism, Functionalism, Game Theory: A DebateThe Case for Methodological Individualism [pp. 453 - 482]Reply to Elster on "Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory" [pp. 483 - 495]Functionalist Marxism Rehabilitated: A Comment on Elster [pp. 497 - 511]Methodological Individualism and Deductive Marxism [pp. 513 - 520]Functionalism vs. Rational Choice?: Some Questions concerning the Rationality of Choosing One or the Other [pp. 521 - 526]Commentary on the Debate [pp. 527 - 539]

Review EssaySome Recent Studies in Class Consciousness [pp. 541 - 553]

Book Reviewsuntitled [pp. 555 - 558]untitled [pp. 558 - 563]untitled [pp. 563 - 568]untitled [pp. 568 - 571]untitled [pp. 571 - 576]untitled [pp. 576 - 580]untitled [pp. 580 - 582]

Back Matter [pp. 583 - 586]

Anthony Giddens - Commentary on the Debate.pdf

Documents

Transcript of Anthony Giddens - Commentary on the Debate.pdf