WKLFAKE ECONOMICS AND INDiVIDVAL DKVEl.OPMKNT… to Parsons.pdf · WKLFAKE ECONOMICS AND INDiVIDVAL...

WKLFAKE ECONOMICS AND

INDiVIDVAL DKVEl.OPMKNT:

A HKPLY TO TATX'OTT PARSONS

IIERBEKT GINTIS

ical \\'cU'ar(' EcoTioniics ami Individualin fnur lofiical ritagcs. First, a methodolugical argument

is ollVred as to the scope of welfare economics. A coherent welfaretheory, I arîe, must doal with the total impact of ecvmomio activiiyon rlie sofia! bases of iniii\'i(iual welfares. "Whenever economicactivity . , . alTeet? the scciai order, we are In the reahii of wel-fares e<'OTHinii!*s." ' Srcnnii. t-ertain liiiuinial aii<i necessary elementso( a welfare theory ade(juate Ut tliis ta -k are (leveloj)iMl. Theêirieliide lal a siiecitieatiun of tlic welfare-rrlevant social entitiesr'liiiit iihje{-ts'') lo vvhicli indi^'iilvials relate or wlt'icli they UHOinsirunientaily in pursuing their ôal^ and which are aft'ccted byeenrmtnie a<'ti^•ity. and Ib) a speeificatiun of indi^•id^lal capariticaapftosife lo deriving well-beiiifi; from f: ivfn "1)un(lles" of tlii/se socialentities. Third, an extension of the usual fTeneral e(|uilihrium mode!(if eeononiie activity, broad enoiij !) to inrhide as endogenous vari-ables tlu' soeia! eiitiiieir and personal eapariticH on which iriilividnalwelfare is based, 'D^ skeicheii and de^-eloped usin^ structural-fiinc-lional tlieory. Fomth. iiofeiassiral w{>lfare eeononu('s and the in-sSitiitional ineelianisnis ji refumniends are criticized on the basisiii tfie aho\'e inndel. In eonelusinn, I arjj:iie thai my model pesosmany I'riiitfiil theoi'etieaf ant! empirical ((Uestions. hut is unopera-tionai in ils firest-jit form, and is ineorrect in adiiering: to a struc-tnral-funetional framework. These cjefieiencies, I sugge.si. can boovercome only if positive iUem-y is coucUwl \i\ a (Ualvctk-al nwihistoriea] franiewnrk, and tiie relation between jiositive and imrnia-tive sjiliereH is itself treated dialeetieally.

Talcott I*ars(!ns' cvitkisms vive diveeteti iihuost exoiushTlytinvard the iliiril staê of my ai'gument (the extendeti structural-funetional trmdel) ;in(i my fonclusion a.s to tiio inadecjuacy of struc-Uival-luneiionnl in\aK>is m iioneral. Whilo his <;lisap])roval is quitegeneral, T fail to discern even a nsinor substiintive eriticism of tin!

er stages in n)y argument. Tiius. 1 shall confine my remarks to

l ( l i i i l i^. "A l!;iiiirnl ATijiiy^îs <if \Vc!f;in" Ecanori i ic^ ntiivjiiiia! r)e\-(lL>|>iiici!l," t ins Jc/unu/t. I , X X X V I ( N o v . 1972), .572-99.on Cui.

292 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS

his criticism of my positive structural-functional model and my con-clusions.

Parsons' main (and recurrent) criticism of the positive modelconcerns its supposed rigid economic determinism. Thus, he charac-terizes the general schema as "that of a whole society that is amonolithic entity completely dominated by the functional needs ofthe capitalist component . . . ," in which noneconomic institutions"are in a simple sense determined by the economic," according to"one-way determination . . . and . . . the postulation of . . . all-pervasive determinism of the capitalist system." ^ Carefully re-reading my paper convinces me that this allegation is quite un-founded. I speak of "affecting," "delimiting," "patterning," andrequiring "compatibility," when referring to the impact of economicactivity on other social spheres — never "determining." The cor-rect formulation, "given certain aspects of social organization, therange of variation of others is strictly delimited," ^ is closely ad-hered to in my discussion of economic institutions. While a generaltreatment of social organization and historical development demandsa close analysis of the complex dialectic between economic andextra-economic spheres, such a treatment is unnecessary for thelimited purposes of revealing the limitations of neoclassical welfareeconomics. Nor is "one-way determinism" necessary to the logicof my argument, as even a superficial reading of my paper shouldindicate. To demonstrate the inadequacy of neoclassical welfareeconomics, it need be shown only that economic activity has asignificant impact on the historical development of other socialspheres, and that this impact is welfare-relevant. Parsons does notquestion this general assertion, as might be expected from his owninsightful contributions to social theory.

Parsons' substantive objections concern the structure of inter-action of economic and noneconomic social spheres through whichmy analysis becomes a socially relevant critique. The cogency ofthis critique rests on two conditions. First, the delimitation of asocial sphere by the economic system must be of demonstrable socialimportance. Second, the economic system must significantly effectthe maintenance, reproduction, and historical development of thesocial sphere in question; that is, economic activity cannot be amere reflection of or a response to exogenous social transformations,

2. Talcott Parsons, "Commentary on Herbert Gintis, 'A Radical Anal-ysis of Welfare Economics and Individual Development,'" this Journal,LXXXIX (May 1975), 280-90.

3. Gintis, op. cit., p. 580.

REPLY TO PARSONS 293

but must be important, historically causal, and immediately sup-portive thereof. I maintain that this is the case. Let me illustratewith the social sphere of education, which Parsons singles out forexplicit treatment.

I adduced two essential connections between the economy andthe educational system. First, the educational system in capitalistsocieties is so organized as to guide personal capacity developmentin directions compatible with the individual's motivation and com-petence to fill economic positions. Second, the wage structure is a(cybernetic) force patterning personal development by inducingindividuals to follow some, rather than other, paths of education;i.e., the wage structure stabilizes and reinforces the social relationsof schooling. The bulk of Parsons' objections, unfortunately, arelimited to such safe, but for the purposes of this argument, irrele-vant contentions as the following: education is not a "simple in-strumentality of the capitalistic system of production"; "the uni-versity in modern society . . . has other functions that are essen-tially independent" from its role in training a labor force; and "thecapitalist economy has been importantly supportive of the educa-tional system. . . ."* More cogent, however, is his objection thatfrom the requirement of literacy in most occupational roles today"it does not . . . follow that the reasons for the development of aneducational system are overwhelmingly the imperatives of 'cap-italistically' organized production," and that I present only "ascattering of citations" ^ in support of my assertions. Let me thenattempt to fill in this argument.* I shall review a portion of theresearch demonstrating that the educational system "supports" theeconomy most directly by selecting and generating noncognitiveand nontechnical personal attributes relevant to operating in thehierarchical division of labor, that it fulfills this function throughthe correspondence between the structure of social relations con-stituting the economic sphere on the one hand and the educationalon the other, and that the history of the development of mass edu-cation singles out the economic system as the major axis aroundwhich emergent social forms solidify.

In my Ph.D. dissertation'' I drew attention to the fact that

4. Parson, op. cit.5. Ibid.6. For a more extended treatment see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis,

Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Rejorm, and the Contradictionsof Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1975).

7. Herbert Gintis, "Alienation and Power: Towards a Radical WelfareEconomics," Ph.D. thesis. Harvard University, 1969, Ch. 6; see also Herbert


cognitive variables have little explanatory value in accounting forthe association of education with individual economic success. Sub-sequent studies support this contention.^ Thus, the educationalsystem provides a "social infrastructure" of cognitive skills suffi-ciently abundant that these skills are not binding constraints amonghiring criteria.® Rather, it is the personal attributes selected andgenerated through education that are valued by employers. In areview of a large body of statistical research, I have shown ^ thatstudents are graded for personality traits associated with subor-dinacy, discipline, internalization of teachers' values, and rule fol-lowing quite independently of the level of cognitive achievement.Several studies by Gene Smith ^ exhibit the same pattern of reward.Richard Edwards ^ has extended this analysis, using a version ofSmith's personality instruments, by showing that the same patternof personal characteristics is indicative of success on the job. Thus,Edwards compared supervisor ratings of several hundred Boston-area workers with a set of thirty-two personality ratings by theworkers' peers. He found that a cluster of three personality traits —which he summarizes as respect for rules, dependability, and in-ternalization of the norms of the firm — predicts strongly * super-visor ratings of workers, while age, sex, social class background,education, and intelligence have little additional predictive value.In addition, Edwards noted that respect for rules was most impor-tant at the lower occupational levels, dependability appearing strong-ly in the middle levels, and internalization of the norms of thefirm predicting best at the higher levels.

We ^ have replicated Edwards' results, using the same personality

Gintis, "Education and the Characteristics of Worker Productivity," Ameri-can Economic Review, LXI (May 1971), 266-79.

8. Bowles and Gintis, op. dt.; Zvi Grihches and William M. Mason, "Ed-ucation, Income, and Ability," Journal oj Political Economy, LXXX, No. 3,Part II (May/June 1972), S74-Sl()3; and Robert Hauser, Kenneth G. Lutter-man, and William H. Sewell, "Socioeconomic Background and the Earnings ofHigh School Graduates," unpublished manuscript. University of Wisconsin,August 1971.

9. To the economist the shadow price of these traits is effectively zero.1. Gintis, "Education and the Characteristics of Worker Productivity."2. Gene M. Smith, "Usefulness of Peer Ratings of Personality in Educa-

tional Research," Educational and Psychological Measurem,ent, XXVII(Winter 1967), 967-84; and "Personality Correlates of Academic Performancein Three Dissimilar Populations," Proceedings of the 77th Annual Convention,American Psychological Association, 1967.

3. Richard C. Edwards "Personal Traits and 'Success' in Schooling andWork," Education and Psychological Measurement, forthcoming, 1975.

4. R' = 0.3&, uncdrrected for errors in measurement and reliability.5. Peter J. Meyer, "Schooling and the Reproduction of the Social Divi-

sion of Labor," honors thesis. Harvard University, 1972; Samuel Bowles,


measures, in predicting not "supervisor ratings" of workers, but"grade point average" of students in a New York high school. Last,Edwards' analysis of data on high school records and worker super-visor ratings collected by Brenner,*' indicates that variables measur-ing teachers' evaluation of student conduct are far more importantthan the student's grade point average in predicting the individual'swork adequacy as perceived by the supervisor. Thus, there areclear indications that the educational system does articulate withthe economy in significant part via these effective selection andgeneration mechanisms.

The educational system prepares individuals for economic rolesby subjecting them to an institutional environment similar to thehierarchically ordered work place. The school is a bureaucraticorder with hierarchical authority, rule orientation, stratification by"ability" and age, role differentiation by sex, and a system of ex-ternal incentives (marks, promise of promotion, and threat offailure) much like pay and status in the sphere of work. Thus,schools are likely to develop in students traits corresponding to thoserequired on the job. While Parsons argues that this descriptionwould not hold in the case of higher education, the facts are other-wise.'' Higher education prepares individuals for middle- andupper-middle levels in the hierarchical division of labor. Institu-tions of higher education are stratified in much the same manner aswhite-collar work,* and with the increased emphasis on corporateorganization and state employment, the system of higher educationis in the process of increasing the stratification of its intemal socialrelations.' Moreover, the Harvard University model, which notsurprisingly appears to have provided Parsons with his perspectiveon higher education, while apposite to the training of elite profes-sionals, while-collar, and managerial groups, is increasingly es-chewed in the development of mass higher education. Junior andcommunity colleges, post-high-school vocational training, and themass production state college and university systems are turning to

Herbert Gintis, and Peter Meyer, "The Long Shadow of Work, "The InsurgentSociologist, forthcoming, 1975.

6. Marshall H. Brenner, "Use of High School Data to Predict Work Per-formance," Journal of Applied Psychology, LII (Jan. 1968), 29-31.

7. J. Binstock, Survival in the American College Industry (forthcoming);Bowles and Gintis, op. cit.; Herbert Gintis, "Counter-Culture and PoliticalActivism," Telos, XII (Summer 1972), 42-62; and J. Karabel, "Community-Colleges and Social Stratification," Harvard Educational Review, XLII (Nov.1972), 521-62.

8. Binstock, op. cit.; Karabel, op. cit.9. Bowles and Gintis, op. cit.; Karabel, op. cit.


models more compatible with proletarianized white-collar labor.^It is not yet clear whether students will accept this reorientation,but if they do, it is clear that the economic return to following this"path of individual development" rather than another will play alarge part. This, of course, is what I mean by "cybernetic pattern-ing." 2

Finally, a study of the history of the rise of mass education sup-ports the view that the social relations of production provided amajor axis structuring its internal relations.^ The rise of elementaryschooling in the industrial North of the United States * and theagricultural South and West, and even the growth of the agricul-tural land-grant colleges,* it seems clear, were scarcely due to cog-nitive and technological requirements. Rather, the birth and earlydevelopment of universal education was sparked by the criticalneeds of a burgeoning capitalist order for a stable work force anda citizenry reconciled, if not inured, to the wage-labor system.Order, docility, discipline, sobriety, and humility — attributes re-quired by the new social relations of production — were admittedby all concerned as the social benefits of schooling. Later develop-ments of the educational system have also responded to changes inthe social relations of economic life. Can Parsons really be so una-ware of this body of research? '

The second major criticism of my analysis of the capitalisteconomy concerns the organization of production itself. Two ofParsons' comments are essentially correct: I do not deal with theincreasingly important sphere of nonprofit services, and I charac-terize all productive activity as "bureaucratic-hierarchical." On

1. Bowles and Gintis, op. cit.2. Gintis, "A Radical Analysis of Welfare Economics and Individual

Development."3. Bowles and Gintis, op. dt.4. David Bruck, "The Schools of Lowell," honors thesis. Harvard Uni-

versity, 1971; Alexander J. Field, "Educational Reform and ManufacturingDevelopment, Massachusetts 1837-1865," University of California, Berkeley,mimeo, 1973.

5. Robert Buchele and James Medoff, "Education and the AgrarianOrder," unpublished manuscript. Harvard University, Jan. 1972.

6. William Lazonick, "The Integration of Higher Education into Agri-cultural Production in the U. S.," unpublished manuscript, Harvard University,1972.

7. See R. Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 1962); David K. Cohen and Marvin Lazerson, "Edu-cation and the Corporate Order," Socialist Revolution, II (March 1972), 47-72;Lawrence Cremin, The Transformation of the School (New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1964); Michael Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1968); Marvin Lazerson, Origins of the UrbanSchool (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). For a review of thisliterature see Bowles and Gintis, op. dt.


the level of generality of my analysis, however, the case of the non-profit enterprise is quite symmetrical with the profit-maximizingfirm: in both cases, managers will attempt to shape the internalsocial relations of production around the imperatives of securehierarchical authority and minimum unit costs of production.*Similarity, I limit my remarks to the hierarchically ordered corpo-rate form of production because it is the dominant and increasinglyimportant mode of organization.^ Beyond this. Parsons does notfind fault with my criticism of the neoclassical welfare treatmentof work or my proposed alternative, but depicts my analysis asignorant of the most trivial commonplaces of modern corporateorganization: that the distinction between controller and controlledis not absolute; that there are an immense variety of occupationalroles within the firm; that there has occurred a separation betweenownership and control; that the managerial function is not restrictedto the exercise of power over workers; that work organization involves"patterns of membership, solidarity, values, and norms." Howthese observations undermine my position is never spelled out, oreven suggested. For instance, in the extended argument stemmingfrom Berle and Means to the present, no one to my knowledge hasargued that the separation of ownership and control has any im-plication for the internal organization of the enterprise, much lessan implication adverse to my analysis. Similarly, that "patternsof membership, solidarity, values, and norms" are basic to theanalysis of the enterprise as a purely economic entity, far fromcompromising the "Marxist conception of the structure of the firm," is absolutely central to its understanding.^ Thus, instead of boringthe reader with my sleuthing Parsons' particular objections, let mepresent a clarifying analysis of the firm in schematic form.

Managers control in the sense that they have jurisdiction overthe internal organization of the enterprise, subject only to legal andcontractual constraints, plus whatever power workers can collec-tively muster in opposition to particular policies. This control is

8. To the extent that units costs need not be minimized, my analysisholds a fortiori.

9. Stanley Lebergott, "Labor Force and Employment Trends," in Indi-cators of Social Change, E. B. Sheldon and W. E. Moore, eds. (New York:Russell Sage, 1968).

1. Parsons, op. dt.2. Ibid.3. See Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, "The Problem with Human

Capital Theory: A Marxist Critique," American Economic Review, LXV (May1975), forthcoming, and Herbert Gintis, "The Nature of the Labor Exchange:Toward a Radical Theory of the Firm," HIER Discussion Paper No. 328, Har-vard University, 1973.


exercised to maintain the power of managers subject to adequatefinancial returns to owners and adequate provisions for the internalfinancing of the growth of the enterprise. Under normal condi-tions, the exercise of control is tantamount to cost minimization inthe production process. But cost minimization is not equivalentto technical efficiency.* The neoclassical argument as to the equiv-alence of profit maximization and technical effiicency is based onthe assumption that the labor-wage exchange is similar to othermarket transactions. It is not. The essence of market transactionis that it represents a binding contractual obligation enforced bylaw and backed by a coercive power outside the jurisdiction of thoseinvolved in the transaction (i.e., the State). The labor-wage ex-change is not of this form, in that the compliance of a worker to thelegally enforceable aspects of the contract (e.g., that he/she mustshow up for work in order to receive the wage) is not sufficient toinsure the smooth operation of the enterprise. That is, there is noquid pro quo in the labor-wage exchange. In this respect, theemployer-employee relationship differs radically from an individualhiring the services of an independent agent. For in the latter case ifthe service is not delivered, the individual has the legal right to with-hold payment. The employer, on the other hand, has only the legalpower not to renew the contract; this can effectively be applied onlypiecemeal, and not to the mass of employees as a group. Formally,in the case of the labor exchange, the coercive power to insure theintegrity of the labor-wage contract lies within the jurisdiction ofthe individuals involved in the exchange — namely, in the internalorganization of the enterprise. This is why power, as well as techni-cal efficiency, is central to the analysis of the enterprise.

Managers then must choose a set of policies that balances offthree major factors: (a) achieving technical efficiency in the senseof output per unit of input; (b) achieving maximal labor input byevoking the proper behavior of workers; and (c) minimizing thecollective power of workers by limiting their perceived solidarityand opportunities for collusion — this latter in order to maximize theshare of value added accruing to capital." This balance will affectdecisions as to lines of authority and control, internal, stratifica-

4. I have argued that, if it were, the Marxist notion of work alienationwould have limited tenability. See Herbert Gintis, "Consumer Behavior andthe Concept of Sovereignty," American Economic Review, LXII (Mav 1972)267-78.

5. See Gintis, "The Nature of the Labor Exchange: Toward a RadicalTheory of the Firm," for elaboration.

6. See, ibid.; and Stephen Marglin, "What Do Bosses Do?" Review ofRadical Political Economics, VI (Summer 1974), 60-112.


tion, the pattern of jobs, the wage structure, criteria of hireability,promotion, and dismissal, the nature of job ladders, and the choiceof technologies, as well as the relative strength of opposition ofmanagement to various worker demands. Towards these ends,managers will draw on the previous socialization of workers ofdifferent sexual, racial, ethnic, and social class backgrounds, takinginto account Parsons' "patterns of membership, solidarity, values,and norms." Indeed, no major aspect of the organization can beunderstood abstracting from these mechanisms.'

These issues, of course, were not brought up in my analysis.However important in their own right, they are not necessary to mytreatment of welfare theory per se. I mention them here, in dis-tressingly abbreviated form, only to defend myself against Parsons'caricature of my analysis. I feel in a similar position regarding hiscriticism of my rejection of structural functionalism. I introduce,claims Parsons, a "somewhat mythical adversary without any priorpreparation of the ground and without any citations." * What Par-sons overlooks is that this "mythical adversary" is my own analysisin the previous sections of the paper. This analysis is structuralfunctional in the most rigorous sense of the word, and the argumentsI adduce against it * are scrupulously correct, if rather limited.

Without entering into the general theoretical issues of struc-tural-functional versus dialectical analysis, a deepening of my argu-ment, applied to the theory of the firm, might be helpful to the read-er. Functional theory takes the "role" as the basic building blockof social analysis.1 In the case of the firm, this involves the deter-mination of work roles by employers, who then hire workers with theproper skills, motivation, values, and norms apposite to the fulfillingof role expectations. The individual worker accepts the obligationof assuming a work role in exchange for a wage, a salary, or a systemof pay incentives. One problem is that workers do not always ful-fill these expectations (functionalists call this "deviance"), and ageneral theory of patterns of conformity and deviance, I wouldargue, is squarely nonfunctionalist.^ But this is not the main point.In essence the objection to the elevation of the "role" to a central

7. Claus Offe, Leistungsprinzip und Industrielle Arbeit (Frankfort: Euro-paische Verlaganstalt, 1970).

8. Parsons, op. cit.9. Gintis, "A Radical Analysis of Welfare Economics and Individual

Development," p. 580.1. Ibid.2. See, for instance, Gintis, "The Nature of the Labor Exchange: Toward

a Radical Theory of the Firm"; and William F. Whyte, Money and Motiva-tion (New York: Harper, 1955).


position in the theory of the firm is that it restores the labor-wageexchange as a quid pro quo, which it decidedly is not: whatever thestructure of work roles, if the worker accepts the wage (quid), he/she agrees to assume the role (pro quo). In contrast, I have arguedthat the structure of jobs in a firm takes its manifest form in largepart in response to the contingency of "proper" worker compliance.The work role is then an important derivative of the analysis of thefirm, hut hy no means its starting point.

A dialectical theory of the firm hegins by noting that there arebasic contradictions between the interests of employers and workers,as well as among workers.^ The internal organization of the enter-prise, as well as its historical development, reproduction, and change,is then analyzed as an institutional setting mediating, shaping, andattenuating or sharpening these contradictions. Only in this settingcan even the reproduction of an organizational form be understood— not to say its change and dissolution. In general, a worker willaccept a wage, in return for which he/she will agree (and by lawmust agree) to participate in the process of production. This doesnot prima facie imply he/she will fulfill any particular set of roleexpectations. Employers do not "expect" workers to act on thebasis of the goals of the organization, to put forth their maximumreasonable effort, to refrain from collusion in their day-to-dayinteractions, to ohey superiors and judge inferiors on purely ob-jective, firm-relevant standards, but to pursue their own goals, sub-ject only to the constraints and inducements provided by the organi-zational structure.* A full appreciation of the theoretical andempirical implications of this formulation requires no less than adialectical treatment.

The example of the firm shows clearly that the objection tofunctional theory is not restricted to the (in my mind overplayed)issue of compatibility with dynamic analysis. As Parsons suggests,Cancion's well-known argument ^ — amply developed since 1960 —that functional analysis is quite capahle of "dealing with" change,is clearly correct.® Indeed, the reproduction of a social system is

3. The contentious reader will no doubt here caricature my position asasserting the complete and total divergence of interest of capitalist and worker,emulating Parsons' strategy of criticism. Such a position is neither reasonablenor mine.

4. Chester I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1938); and Herbert Simon, Administrative Be-havior (New York: Free Press, 1967).

5. Francesca Cancion, "Functional Analysis of Change," American Soci-ological Review, XXV (Dec. 1960), 818-27.

6. And hence my objection ("A Radical Analysis of Welfare Economicsand Individual Development," p. 598) is poorly formulated.


itself a major form of "change," and any analysis that deals with thedeepest roots of social reproduction will handle adequately historicalchange in structural variables as a matter of course. Reproductioninvolves the continual surge of conflict, contradiction, resolutionand re-resolution, where accommodation is mediated by structuralstability and change.'' Neither the analysis in the major sections ofmy article nor any functionalist methodology is capable of pene-trating these issues beyond a certain intermediate point. To thispoint, and when handled with care, structural-functional analysiscan be of course be a useful tool. Parsons, however, would have usstop at this point.

The majority of the issues discussed in both Parsons' critiqueand this reply, the reader will observe, are not central to my treat-ment of neoclassical welfare economics. Parsons' concern presum-ably arises from the central position of these issues in the burgeoningchallenge to liberal social science by radical political activists andintellectuals. This challenge, emanating from the widespread demys-tification in the past decade of the belief that liberal capitalism cansolve major social problems, has gone hand in hand with the height-ening of contradictions in the advanced industrial countries andthe Third World as well. Clearly, this challenge cannot go un-answered by defenders of the present order.

The political intent of Parsons' remarks appears quite clearlyin his pique that I do not explain how freedom would expand by ashift to Socialism in America,* despite the fact that I explicitlyargue the insufficiency of my "welfare paradigm" to analyze thisquestion! I would argue that in this historical period only an ex-pansion of the degree of democratic and participatory control thatindividuals have over their lives is compatible with full personaldevelopment, rewarding social activity, the elimination of class,racial, and sexual antagonisms, and material equality.® The con-tribution of political democracy to this end is vitiated by the total-itarian organization of production. Only democracy and participa-tion in production — i.e., the replacement of the capitalist class bythe working class (white collar and blue, black and white, male and

7. See Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, for an applica-tion to the educational system.

8. Parsons, op. cit.9. Paul Blumberg, Industrial Democracy (New York: Schocken Books,

1969); Paul Sweezy and Charles Bettelheim, The Transition to Socialism (NewYork: Monthly Review Press, 1971); HEW Task Force, Work in America(Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1973); Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in CapitalistAmerica.


female) as the architects of production, and the accountability ofmanagers and technicians to the will of workers — is compatiblewith equality and full individual development. The inherentlyalienating jobs in society must be shared and not left to the losersin a cut-throat competition, biased by the very fact that the struc-ture of social classes reflects the hierarchical division of labor.^Markets as determinants of historical development must be replacedby people as determinants, with markets used judiciously as clearingmechanisms alone in major social spheres.^ Equality must be builtin to the social relations of production.

Only history will prove that this is indeed possible, and the his-torical possibility depends on the ability of the working class —white, black, and brown; male and female; white- and blue-collar,as well as technical workers, public and private employees — tocome together around a common program of social revolution. Butscientific investigation does cast doubt on the contentions of capital-ist apologists as to the absurdity of a humane society. Economistsargue that people really get what they want in America (i.e., con-sumer, worker, and citizen sovereignty really hold). This does notbear up to analysis.* Sociologists argue that inequality is "func-tionally necessary" and determined by differences in talents andabilities. This too seems false.* All agree that the social relations ofcapitalist production are technologically necessary, whereas experi-ments in worker control uniformly seem to suggest the opposite.^Capitalism is certainly not an adequate social system, and themisery of the human race cannot be laid at the feet of science. I amneither the first nor the last to suggest that workers of the worldunite.

Politics aside, I find myself quite unmoved by the criticismspresented by Parsons, and would urge him, along with other socialscientists, to turn his ample talents toward investigating the mostpressing social issue of our time: the transition to a humane anddemocratic socialism.

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST

1. Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America.2. Herbert Gintis, "Welfare Theory and the Economics of Education,"

International Economic Review, XV (June 1974), 415-430; Sweezy and Bet-telheim, op. cit.

3. Gintis, "Consumer Behavior and the Concept of Sovereignty"; andJames O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis oj the State (New York: St. Martin'sPress, 1973).

4. Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America.5. Blumberg, op. cit.; Whyte, op. cit.; HEW Task Force, op. cit.

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