Wallace and Wolf CONFLICT THEORY AND THE CRITIQUE OF SOCIETY This section covers the conflict theory of Marx and modern Marxist sociologists,of the Frankfurt School analysts-particularly Horkheimer, Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse, and Habermas-and of C. Wright Mills. All the writers in this group are distinguished by their view of social science; their image of society as divided hierarchically into exclusive groups; and their belief in the possibility of an ideal social order. In general, we refer to them as "critical" theorists because they all use social science to criticize society, and in particular the "ruling class," the "power elite," or what is often the "establishment." However, "critical theory" is also used more narrowly to refer to the work of the Frankfurt School. "Critical" conflict theorists believe that social analysts should not separate their work from their moral commitments, and they see their theories as a force for change and progress. They also believe that objectivity is more or less impossible. For them social science is inextricably bound up with the particular views of a writer, which are in turn a function of his or her society, and fact is consequently inextricable from value. In other words, they reject the usual scientific view that, whatever writers' own values, or motives in writing, may be, their theories stand or fall by whether independent factual evidence supports them. At the same time, "critical" conflict theorists feel sure that their own values and standards are the right ones, and therefore a justified basis for social critique. The particular focus of their critique is the way wealth, status, and power are distributed in society. Theorists of this type generally see society as divided rather clearly between a small group of powerful and privileged people and an exploited or manipulated mass. They are also inclined to use a "unicausal" theory of social structure, and to see people's circumstances as primarily determined by one set of institutions, most often property. At the same time, they do not believe that society need be highly segmented and unequal. They contrast the societies they analyze with a better order of things and often compare the "irrational" present, in which human development is stunted, with an ideal and "rational" state of affairs, in which human potential will be fulfilled. This vision of'a society based on values which they presume to be absolutely valid, as well as their concept of "real" human nature, are the starting points for their criticisms of actual societies. 74 Conflict Theory In all of this, Marx is the dominant influence. The argument that ideas are a product of social circumstances and for that reason not objectively correct is his. Moreover, although he believed that his own theory was not open to the charge of being an "ideology" but was, on the contrary, objectively true, he also regarded his work as a form of political and moral action-an expression of the ideas that would guide the proletariat to inevitable victory. Marxists use the term praxis to describe actions informed in this way by theoretical considerations and, more precisely, revolutionary consciousness. In addition, Marx presented a two-class model of society; divided between oppressors and oppressed on the basis of property, and looked forward to the communist utopia in which mankind would realize its essential nature. For the most part, conflict theory of this type has developed in Europe, particularly western Europe. In communist countries, Marxism or Marxism-Leninism is essentially a state religion and not open to critical analysis and development. Philosophers, sociologists, and political theorists, such as Leszek Kolakowski, who engage in such analysis, are likely to be forced into exile.24 On the other hand, in western Europe intellectuals have continued to be greatly influenced by Marx. Although the organized Communist parties have themselves produced some important Marxist theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci in Italy, they too insist on doctrinal orthodoxy; and the major source of modern critical conflict theory is Marxist intellectuals outside the party hierarchies. In America there was a strong Marxist and Communist element in intellectual life during the 1930s and 1940s. Nevertheless, although a number of sociologists and economists (such as Norman Birnbaum and Paul Sweezy) continued to use Marxist categories, Marxist analysis had little direct impact on American sociology in the twenty years immediately after the Second World War. During this period, the only widely known and influential "critical" sociologist was C. Wright Mills, who was heavily influenced by Marx but not in any clear sense a Marxist. During the Vietnam period, however, many younger American sociologists were involved with the New Left and heavily influenced by various radical writers, but quite specifically by Marx. Consequently, both the "critical sociology" of the Frankfurt tradition and other Marxist and neo-Marxist writings are becoming increasingly known and influential in American SoCiology.25 Marxian journals have been founded specifically devoted to this approach. KARL MARX AND MODERN MARXIST SOCIOLOGY Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany. His parents were Jews who had converted to Protestantism to avoid discrimination and loss of civil rights and, in particular, to protect his father's law practice. Marx also began to study law. However, at the University of Berlin, he became fascinated by the philosophy of Hegel, who interpreted the whole of history as the process by which "Spirit" (and consequently humanity) progressed towards complete self-knowledge and a "rational" and "free" society. Marx became a Young Hegelian, one of a group of young philosophers who questioned many parts of the master's teachings while remaining beholden to his approach. Indeed, in later years, Marx came to see his own writings as upending Hegel's, replacing Hegel's emphasis on mind as the crucial determinant of history with his own "materialist" philosophy, which demonstrated that material factors determined events. He also became an antireligious radical, and after completing his thesis, worked as a writer and publicist in Paris and Belgium. During this period he wrote The Communist Manifesto, which sets out a program for a revolutionary government and outlines his theory of social structures and social change. When the revolution of 1848 broke out in Germany, he returned to edit a radical news- paper. After the revolution failed, he went into exile again and settled in London, his home for the rest of his life. During much of this period, Marx and his family were extremely poor; help from his friend, Friedrich Engels, a socialist textile manufacturer, was vital. Nonetheless, his theories became increasingly well-known and influential, especially outside England. He was consulted more and more frequently by Russian and German radicals and revolutionaries; and since his death, "Communist" parties have developed all over the world.26 Their dogma is the analyses of Marx and Lenin, who led the first "Communist" 27 We shall describe briefly Marx's discussion of the economic revolution basis of social organization; the classes and class conflict that arise around economic interests; and the importance of ideology in both maintaining and undermining a social order. We shall also consider his comprehensive theory of social evolution and his prophecy of the ideal ctxtssless and state- less society to come.28 The Economic Basis of Society The distinguishing mark of Marxist analysis is that it identifies economic factors as the fundamental determinant of social structure and change. Other spheres of social life and the ideas and values that people hold are seen as shaped by and dependent on the nature of economic production. In Schumpeter's analogy, they play the role of "transmission belts," through which the social forces and group interests created by economic arrangements emerge into social life.29 Marx distinguished between three aspects of social organization. They are, first, the "material forces of production," or the'l,actual methods by which people produce their livings; second, the "relations of production" that arise out of them and that include property relations and rights; and third, the "legal and political" superstructures and the ideas, or "forms of social consciousness," that correspond to the first two. He argued that in production, "men enter into definite . . . relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation.... The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual lifeprocess in general." 30 In other words, in Marx's view, the actual mode of production is the basic causal factor that ultimately determines how societies are organized. In this sense his is a "materialist" theory of history, whereby "in changing their mode of production ... (men) change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalists' At the same time, however, both the mode and the relations of production-the technology and the form of economic organization-are the "substructure" that defines both the nature of a particular society and its "superstructure" of law, government, and ideas. In practice, both Marx and later Marxist writers tend to pay more attention to the effects of economic organization than of the mode of production alone. Indeed, this is a far more plausible approach. There was little difference in technology between, for example, the Roman Empire and medieval Europe; yet their social structures were very different. These differences were, moreover, often clearly related to differences in economic organization, such as Rome's use of numerous slaves and feudalism's system of serfdom.32 However, if one admits that economic organization, rather than technology, is the primary determinant of social structure, one also undermines, to a considerable degree, Marx's claim that a single principle "unlocks" the workings of society. If different forms of economicorganization can coexist with a given technology, then these forms must result, at least partly, from other, noneconomic factors --the ideas and legal principles that Marxism relegates to the "superstructure," for example, or the principles of military organization, which Marxists generally ignore. Thus, many historians would argue that the different forms of economic organization in Rome and feudal Europe (and the wide-ranging differences in their social structure) can themselves only be understood in terms of their different legal codes and systems and their different military organization. A society with a centralized standing army is obviously different from one in which fighting is the task of feudal lords who owe service to the king but who are "paid" with grants of land-of which they are virtually independent rulers. And in that case, Marx's "economic theory of history" becomes, as its critics would argue, an insight of genius into the role of economic factors but not an all-embracing explanation. Class and the Economic Base of Conflict Marx argued that all forms of economic organization that had exist at the time he wrote inevitably generated conflict between social class which were defined by their common economic position. The Communist Manifesto opens with a now-famous declaration: "The history of all hithe existing society is the history of class struggles. 1133This statement embod three important but separate propositions. The first is that people whose economic position, or "class," is the same also tend to act together a group. The second is that economic classes are the most important group to be found in society: their history is the history of human society. Third is that these classes are mutually antagonistic, and the outcome their conflicts defines how society develops. Marx's theory of class is thus not simpIy a theory of social structure: it is also a theory of change. Property and Class Although we have been ascribing the Marxist concept of class as "economic," Marx actually used a more specific and restrictive definition. A class is made up of people who are alike in their relationship to property: they have none, or they have the same type. 34 Ultimately, the sort of work people do is not what matters. Thus, manual workers, clerks, technicians, and engineers belong to the same class because they own and are paid for their labor. They belong to a different class from capitalists and landlords, who own the instruments of production; from serfs, who only partly own their own labor because they are bound to a given lord and cannot go to work for someone else; and from slaves, who own no property at all. If you look around a university campus, you will find that the only "factor of production" most people there own is their labor. In Marxist terms they therefore belong to the same class: the, proletariat. This will certainly be true of most of the students and also of a good number of the faculty, who work for a salary and who, although they probably own their homes, do not own any "means of production." On the other hand, some faculty and some students probably own a fair number of shares of stock; some mature students may also be running businesses; and, especially if the campus is M.I.T., some of the faculty are likely to be founders and owners of high-technology industries, which are offshoots of their work. Because they own property of this type, all the people in the second group belong to another, different class of "capitalists." Marx, we should note, does not differentiate between shareholders, who simply provide capital, and entrepreneurs. 35 Marxist theory argues that different classes inevitably have incompatible interests, because under systems of property-ownership, if one class makes economic gains, it must be at the expense of another. According to Marx, each of the major economic systems that existed in the past strengthened one particular class, which could then exploit others. He wrote that "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf' ' guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight," and that "An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes."37 In bourgeois society, capitalists are the oppressors and the proletariat the oppressed. In explaining what Marx meant by this, we must reiterate that Marx's general theory is the work of an analytical economist. His theory of exploi- tation is based on an economic theory of value,38 and it is important to note that in its essentials, his was the value theory of the "classical" economist Ricardo. Nowadays, the "labor theory of value" is seen as a distinguishing aspect of Marxism, because it is only Marxist economists who continue to hold it. However, in Marx's own time it was standard theory, and not what he himself would have seen as his major idea. Marx states that the value of a commodity is equal to the quantity of labor that went directly into making it. In a market economy, workers selling their labor will get for it the price of the labor that went into "making" them: that is, the cost of rearing, feeding, clothing, and housing them. However, what each of them produces at work will very likely amount to considerably more than this; and this "surplus value" will go not to them but to the capitalist. In Marx's theory, any surplus value appropriated by someone other than the worker is by definition exploitation, because only labor produces value. All systems of property therefore involve a basic conflict of interest because one group expropriates the product of another's labor.39 Modern Marxist and Marxian sociologists retain Marx's emphasis on property relationships. Norman Birnbaum, for example, uses Marxist categories to analyze the United States. He attacks the argument that property ownership is no longer a crucial determinant of power and opportunity, and that a meritocratic education system decides people's success. Birnbaum argues that educational success and "access to some of the more privileged educational institutions" are a function of family background. The "technocratic 61ite" is thus far from being a new group with interests and objectives quite separate from those of "capitalists.1140 Rather, Birnbaum contends, it operates modern organizations in the interests of property" and is backed by government, with which it has a symbiotic relationship. Class Conflict Marx argued that at any one time, it is class struggle that defines the essential character of a society. It is the product of, on theone hand, the irreconcilable differences in interest between classes; and, on the other, the fact that a class's common interests are so strong that they will encourage its members to group together for common action. However, at any given time, the degree to which members of a class recognize their interests will depend on their level of class consciousness. The dominant ideas of an era may stand in the way of their recognizing their class identity; but so too may the circumstances of their lives. The French peasants of the nineteenth century, for example, did not "form a class" in the active sense, according to Marx, because "there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them."41 It is the task of the Marxist to encourage people-and specifically the members of the exploited proletariat-to recognize and act upon their interests: to encourage and accelerate change and revolution, as well as understand its roots. Thus, one of the foremost young American Marxistsociologists recently argued that "Class interests in capitalist society are ... potential objectives." They are "hypotheses about the objectives of struggles which would occur if the actors in the struggle had a scientifically correct understanding of their situations."42 What Marx provides here is a powerful theory of how groups form in society. However, critics have queried the degree to which members of a property class do always have common interests or tend to act in unison. For example, innovations are favored by those who introduce them, and feared by all those involved with established firms, whether as owners, employees, or union officials. Government policy often benefits one part of an industry at another's expense, for example, by limiting imports of cheap foreign coal or oil, and so increasing energy costs. In America, Northern businessmen wishing to relocate to small Southern towns are often opposed by local employers, who fear the impact of higher wages and benefits, and welcomed by prospective workers for the same reasons. Again, Marxists tend to see any change in an industry'sjob structure which increases the numbers of differentjobs, productivity bonuses, etc., as a conscious effort to undermine solidarity and conceal workers' "fundamental" interests (in organized struggle) behind their "immediate," individual interests.43 It is certainly true that a more diverse job structure in which pay is linked to individual effort is likely to create a less unified, or uniformly militant work force; as seems to be happening, for just these reasons, with the British miners. Non-Marxist conflict theorists, however, would not tend to discriminate between real and immediate interests. They would rather be inclined to say that individuals' situations have changed; and so, therefore, has the action which they perceive to be in their best interests. In consequence, the sorts of groups likely to takejoint action have also altered. Culture, Ideology, and Alienation Marx emphasized that feelings and opinions about people in power are of major importance: especially whether their position is viewed as right, or whether people feel exploited and oppressed. He thesis identified one of the major topics of conflict theory.44 Marx's own discussion of the role of ideas in establishing control follows from his argument that the legal, political, and cultural "superstructure" is ultimately a reflection of underlying economic relationships. He argued that people in a class society believe a large number of things that are not correct but which are rather a form of "ideology" whose main purpose and effect is to legitimize the position of those currently in control. Such ideology stands in the way of other people realizing what their "real" interests are, so that, Marxists argue, they suffer from false consciousness. To Marx, religion was an excellent example of this process, an "opium of the masses" that muted discontent by focusing attention on a supposedly better world to come. It is this part of Marx's thought which inspired his and his followers' criticisms of "objective" social reporting and analysis, as, in fact, imbued with the authors' prejudices. However, Marx did not--unlike. later theorists such as the symbolic interactionists-reject the possibility of quantitative research as such, since he was sure that his own viewpoint was scientifically correct. Thus, in order to obtain adequate information on working class conditions, he drew up a long questionnaire which was distributed through workers' societies and groups in France. Questions ranged from "Is your work done by hand or with the aid of machinery?" to "Do you know any instances in which the Government has intervened to protect the workers against the exactions of the employers and their illegal combinations?" This questionnaire,45 devised at the very end of Marx's working life, is concerned entirely with the "outward" conditions of work. However, Marx also believed that class society was evil because, besides fostering exploitation and false consciousness, the whole nature of its economic life created alienation. Marx felt that man has an essential nature, which he believed to be realized through creative work. (This notion is, we may note, quite different from Durkheim's, who felt that mankind needed limits and fixed norms. Durkheim was also concerned at the consequences of modern industrial society for human development; but his concept of anomie, or normlessness, appeals greatly to functionalists.46 For Marx, the division of labor, the institution of private property, and the whole "cash nexus" of commercial relationships alienate man not only from what he produces and the act of producing it, but also from both himself and his fellows. He views them in terms of the narrow standards of the workplace, rather than as full "species-beings."47 Consequently the abolition of property, and its attendant class relationships, would also end this alienation. This part of Marx's thought has been given increasing attention in recent decades; and its influence is apparent far beyond strictly "Marxist" writings. Criticisms of the soullessness of modern work, or the actions of people opting for a self-supporting and/or communal life, all belong to the same broad strand of thought as Marx's early writing on alienation. It should be emphasized, however, that Marx did not share the romantic view that the country was inherently superior to the town, and the Industrial Revolution a catastrophe. On the contrary-capitalism and the wealth it produced were the necessary preconditions for the Communist utopia. Evolution and the Classless Society Marx's social theory is essentially a theory of change and evolution, which looks back over the whole of history, forward to the future, and claims to explain and understand both. A given economic system has within it, Marx argued, the seeds of change: its own logic and the way it works necessarily produce its successor. Marxists describe this process in terms of a given order's "contradictions," which develop over time until the whole system becomes unworkable, and there is a violent, revolutionary shift to another order altogether, the "negation" of the previous one. This view of development and change as a pattern of inner conflict is known as dialectical.48 Like many other elements in his theory, including alienation, Marx's idea of the dialectic is a reworking of a Hegelian concept. However, Hegel was interested in the development of self-awareness and "Spirit." Marx's concern was the evolution of human society through economic stages. Marx identified four major types of class society, each with its "primary classes"-Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and bourgeois. The Asiatic mode is based on state-controlled irrigation and a system of royal despotism and ownership of all land; but Marx treats only the last three in detail as part of Western history. In each case, change involves the appearance of new classes. The barbarian military chieftains who overran the Roman empire replaced ancient society with a society of feudal overlords and serfs; in turn they were replaced by the capitalist bourgeoisie, the adversaries of the proletariat. The next stage, however, would be different, Marx prophesied: for the contradictions inherent in capitalism would usher in an ideal communist society, in which property and classes were abolished and alienation replaced by self-realization. In dialectical terms, communist society would "emerge phoenix-like from the ashes of capitalist society."49 The End of Capitalism Marx argued that over time many smaller capitalists, along with the other distinctive groups of previous eras-small shopkeepers, peasants, handicraftsmen-would be swallowed up into the proletariat, their skills obsolete or their capital too small for them to compete. Only two ever more strongly differentiated classes would remain. At the same time, capitalists would produce more and more, on the backs of the exploited work force, without the market expanding correspondingly. Competition would then force the capitalists to cut prices and wages, and the rate of profit would decline towards zero. The outcome would be misery for the masses-but also revolt and the end of capitalism. Thus, Marx argues, "along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize ... grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized ... The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated."50 Marx's forecasts clearly have not been borne out. There has been neither increasing misery in the West nor a steady decline in the rate of profit. Moreover, although production is more "concentrated," ownership is not, and shareholders are more and more often trade unions ot pension funds. Marxist analysts, however, have been at pains to show that the survival of capitalism is temporary.Lenin's theory of imperialism is the most influential such argument. In his great work, Capital, Marx remarks that capitalist countries use their colonies as providers of raw materials, captive markets for their products, and treasure-grounds to loot.52 From these remarks, Lenin developed a Marxist theory of imperialism. He argued that advanced capitalism's need for ever-expanding markets and profitable investment opportunities would dictate a foreign policy of imperialism and of destructive wars among individual rivals for colonial possessions.53 Imperialism would, temporarily, stave off the time when profits vanished and capitalism disappeared. These ideas are pervasive in the arguments both of Third World politicians and intellectuals, who argue that the West exploited and exploits their countries, and of Western critics of their own governments. A good example is the work of Regis Debray, a young French Marxist, who spent a period with the South American guerillas led by Castro's friend and associ- ate, Che Guevara, and who hit world headlines when he was arrested and imprisoned. Debray argues that the regimes of South America are an arm of the ruling class and that under them there is taking place the "polarization of exploited and exploiters." Meanwhile, North American imperialism "has increased its forces in the field" under the guise of assistance-missionaries, Peace Corps volunteers, technical projects, sociological research, and the like. "In a word, all these close-knit networks of control strengthen the national machinery of domination."54 Critics argue, however, that although governments often have acted in pursuit of the economic interests of home investors, the Marxist theory of imperialism is inadequate and frequently wrong. They charge that it fails to account for the frequently "imperialist" policies of noncapitalist countries; for the fact that imperialism was characteristic of the early days of capitalism, before falling profits should have threatened; and for the fact that capitalist countries often do not act according to economic interest. Britain, for example, staged a complete military withdrawal from the oil-producing Persian Gulf states on which her industry depended. Closely related to these ideas about imperialism is "dependency theory," which has developed a view of the world as divided into "core" and "periphery.55 These ideas have been developed furthest by Immanuel Wallerstein in his work on the "Modern World-System." He argues that the 4 6 core" countries of Western Europe built up economic domination of the world during the sixteenth century via geographical expansion. The "periphery" supplies raw materials for the core's enterprises, and there are parallel differences in how labor is "controlled." According to Wallerstein, "Free labor is the form of labor control used for skilled work in core countries whereas coerced labor is used for less skilled work in peripheral areas. The combination thereof is the essence of capitalism."56 However, critics query whether underdeveloped countries were or are exploited in the sense of being impoverished by capitalist production. They point out that nineteenth-century America, for example, was a major recipient of foreign investments, as are today's fastest-growing countries, 57 and that some of the richest countries of the "core"-such as Australia- are predominantly exporters of raw materials. More generally, Wallerstein's work has been criticized for "economic determinism," or underemphasizing the importance of political organization and other noneconomic factors. Capitalism in America American Marxists are, not surprisingly, especially interested in the survival of capitalism; for class-based groupings are less evident in the United States than in any other Western industrial country, and the advent of socialism does not seem very likely in the near future. In their analyses, they place particular emphasis on the role of education. This is partly, no doubt, because so many of them developed their views during the campus activism of the 1960s, when educational institutions seemed so important, but also because of the increasing emphasis among modern Marxist thinkers on ideology and the importance of the superstructure." One of the best-known of recent American analyses is very clearly a product of the 1960s. Bowles and Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America is a call to arms as well as an academic publication; and one which sees students as a revolutionary vanguard. The authors contend that American education has always reflected the underlying economic structure-and specifically the capitalist nature-of American society. "A proper organization of educational and economic.,,4fe, we believe, can unleash a people's creative powers without recreating the oppressive poles of domination and subordinacy, self-esteem and self-hatred, affluence and deprivation ... (This) will occur only as a result of a prolonged struggle... waged by those social classes and groups who stand to benefit from the new era. This book is intended to be a step in that long march."58 Few sociologists would argue with the proposition that schooling must essentially reflect the wider society-even though it contradicts the traditional liberal view of education as a potential solution to the problems of American life. What Bowles and Gintis argue, however, is that this part of the "superstructure" reflects not the demands of industrial society generally, but rather of a "potentially explosive" process by capitalists expropriate "surplus value," that is, profit.59 Capitalist education, they argue, serves not only to impart skills which make workers more productive, but, even more crucially, creates attitudes which increase productivity, and defuses class conflict by legitimating in- equality. Specifically, it "legitimates economic inequality by providing an ... ostensibly meritocratic mechanism for assigning individuals to unequal economic positions."60 It also prepares them for work by reproducing, within the school, the hierarchical division of labor of the capitalist workplace. Students obey teachers, who in turn obey administrators. School work, like adult employment, is fragmented; and it is alienating, because students have so little control over their education. Bowles and Gintis cite some interesting empirical studies in support of their argument. At work, they note, "the lowest levels ... emphasize rule-following, middle levels, dependability, and the capacity to operate without direct and constant supervision, while the higher levels stress the internalization of the norms of the enterprise."61 Correspondingly, work by Jeanne Binstock suggests that the way particular educational establishments operate reflects their students' future destination.62 According to Binstock, institutions that enroll working-class students, and are geared to staffing lower-level jobs, emphasize external compliance-behaving like a "follower." More elite schools emphasize leadership, task-orientation and innovation, and internalization of norms. This shows in, for example, how far the schools enforce regulations about personal conduct, or control extracurricular activities, as well as in the looseness of academic structure. In arguing that these aspects of education are essentially capitalist, Bowles and Gintis devote considerable attention to the "origins of mass public education," and argue that it was essentially a response to the growth of the factory system and the employers' fears of labor unrest. By 1840 roughly three-quarters of the adult population could already read and write. "Intellectual skills were not required for most workers on the job . . . we doubt that any employer familiar with the daily workings of their textile mills or other similar factories would seriously entertain the notion that the curriculum taught in the schools of the day had much connection to the productive capacities of the workers."63 Some educational reformers of the nineteenth century, like the great Horace Mann, clearly wished to create a school system which "knows no distinction of rich and poor, of bond and free."64 Others, however, were quite openly instrumental in their motives, and in exactly the ways Bowles and Gintis would expect. The Boston School Committee introduced sewing into the schools because of the "industrious habits which (it) tends to form"; and the Springfield School Committee wanted teachers to form habits for life which included "order and neatness ... punctuality."65 Bowles and Gintis demonstrate convincingly the value of looking at American educational history in terms of conflict as well as (if not necessarily instead of) integration and skill learning. The question is how far they demonstrate that "capitalism" is the crucial explanation of events; that the fundamental conflict will always be between groups defined by their relationship to property. The work of the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim provides a useful comparison 66 for he too was highly occupied with education-but as a way of integrating a politically divided country. ,The France of his day was a country heavily divided, still, by the issues of the French Revolution. Its Republican politicians regarded public education as a way of capturing the minds of French children and creating a shared secular patriotism.67 French teachers of the nineteenth century were encouraged to regard themselves as missionaries for the Republic, ranged against the "reactionary" forces of the Church and its allies-the rural landowners, but also the Catholic peasantry.68 One may also query whether the history of American education is always best analyzed in terms of property-related interests.Randall Collins,one of whose own major interests is in education as a source of privilege, has argued that education becomes really important for control in situations involving alien ethnic or cultural groups, rather than classes.69 As Bowles and Gintis themselves report, in Massachusetts it was the relative size of the new immigrant Irish community in a town, along with the degree of overcrowding, which was most closely associated with school board attempts to lengthen time in school. Although Bowles and Gintis' view of the historic role of education is that it preserved capitalism, they also believe (like all Marxists) that capitalism will eventually fall victim to its internal contradictions. Writing in the aftermath of the 1960s, they argue that "The student movement and the continuing radicalization of young people's values is an expression of ... the increasingly obvious conflicts between the imperatives of profit and the requirements of human welfare and progress.1170 More recently, Marxists have come to emphasize the results of the "non-elite" destination of many students instead of the revolutionary role of students as a whole. Theorists like Erik Olin Wright believe that there is a constant tendency, under capitalism, to "deskill"jobs-that is, reduce them to routine, which makes it easier to supervise and control workers. "Thus, capitalists look for innovations which tend to reduce skill levels and reduce the autonomy of workers on the job."71 The combination of overeducated workers and deskilled . obs is seen as a potentially potent route to class consciousness. It will make workers who have traditionally seen themselves as "middle-class" realize that their interests lie with the organization of the whole "working class." A recent article by Olin Wright and Singelmann72 uses census data to argue that the Marxist view is more accurate than the opposite and very common argument: that the labor force has become less "proletarianized," more skilled, and autonomous. Their case is that, within given industrial sectors, there is a clear recent increase in the proportion of jobs which are definitely "working-class"-in their formulation, jobs in which workers have little freedom to decide how to do them. At the same time, the sectors which expanded most in terms of overall numbers of jobs were those with relatively more "semi-autonomous"jobs, and relatively fewer "proletarian" ones. For the economy as a whole, these two shifts tended to cancel each other out. Nonetheless, the authors argue, "within given economic sectors, there was a systematic tendency for those positions with relatively little control over their labor processes to expand during the 1960's and for those positions with high levels of autonomy to decline."73 Moreover, they predict, "the rest of the century is likely to be characterized by a continuing and perhaps intensifying process of proletarianization."74 This analysis provides an interesting alternative to the general view that industrial countries' populations are increasingly "middle-class." However, even if Wright and Singelmann turn out to be correct in their predictions, it is not obvious that increased "class consciousness" is the probable result. It depends very much on what people's expectations really are, and how quickly they adjust them; and on how far the population at large shares Marx's view of creative work as central to self-fulfillment. A recent survey by Val Burris produced no evidence that people who were "overeducated" for their jobs move to left-wing positions, or become generally alienated from politics. The only discernible effect was a slight decrease in job satisfaction among the most highly overeducated. Class, Society, and the State Marx's belief in classless society rested on his argument that property is the essential determinant of class interest. This implies that if everyone has exactly the same relationship to property, there can be no class divisions. If no one owns land or capital and there are no rents and profits or returns to capital to be paid, labor will get all of its "surplus value," and exploitation will end. In other words, abolishing property will end social conflict. Orthodox Communists share this view; and other Marxists and socialists also believe that the abolition of private property will remove many of the systematic conflicts they perceive in social life. However, not only non-Marxists but also many Marxian analysts, who share Marx's belief in the primary importance of economic factors, question whether the abolition of property necessarily abolishes systematic differences of interest among social groups. Their reason for doing so is the existence of state power. State Power Marx described the state as an instrument of class rule, and he saw political domination as a reflection and expression of conflict between classes. He therefore argued that, with the establishment of a classless society, the state too would be abolished; and instead of a coercive structure, there would remain only routine and uncontroversial administrative tasks.76 It is not at all obvious, however, that this is likely, as we can see from Marx's own description of the state apparatus. When Marx discussed the role of the state, with its legal authority, bureaucracies, law enforcement agents, and armed forces he actually ad- vanced two propositions-although he nowhere recognized them as different. The first was that the state made class exploitation possible by providing stability, under which one group was able to remain dominant.77 The other was that the state was actually an instrument of class rule (in the sense of being an arm of the exploiting class), and its purpose was to advance the exploiting class's interests.78 These views imply very different interpretations of the role of government officials; for the first, unlike the second, implies that they may be seen as a separate group with independent interests, and not merely as part of the ruling class. In that case, it is a good deal less plausible to suppose that a coercive state apparatus, the distinction between state and society, and the potential for conflict over state control will disappear. Marx envisaged communist society as one in which scarcity had vanished-as a result of the achievements of bourgeois capitalism, which in this respect he greatly admired. He also talked as though the abolition of property would also cause all important differences between people to disappear. Consequently, there would be a single social will; economic production would proceed on the basis of universal consent; and a separate, coercive state apparatus would no longer be required. His critics argue that a society without scarcity is nowhere apparent; and that even if it were obtainable there is no reason to suppose that people would always agree on where factories should be sited for example, or whether and for how long school should be compulsory. Moreover, if scarcity did remain, and production was no longer the responsibility of private individuals, state power would be far more, not less, important. There would be fierce conflicts over who controlled the powers of the state.79 The result (critics contend) would be more like Marx's "Asiatic mode" than his communist vision. An essentially Marxist analysis of the self-interested use of power in socialist societies is offered by Milovan Djilas in The New Class. 80 Djilas, who was a friend of Tito's and vice-president of Yugoslavia, was expelled from the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1954 and has served long prison sentences for his views. In The New Class, Djilas argues (following Marx) that classes are essentially based on the property they control. Abolishing private property, however, has not meant the abolition of classes. Instead, he contends, in communist countries it has created a new class, the political bureaucracy, which controls all property (since all property is the state's) and uses it to appropriate to itself power and privilege at the expense of the rest of the population: As in other owning classes, the proof that (the political bureaucracy) is a special class lies in its ownership and its special relations to other classes. In the same way, the class to which a member belongs is indicated by the material and other privileges which ownership brings to him. As defined by Roman law, property constitutes the use, enjoyment, and disposition of material goods. The.Communist political bureaucracy uses, enjoys, and disposes of nationalized property.... In practice, the ownership privilege of the new class manifests itself as an exclusive right, as a party monopoly, for the political bureaucracy to distribute the national income, to set wages, direct economic development, and dispose of nationalized and other property. This is the way it appears to the ordinary man who considers the Communist functionary as being very rich and as a man who does not have to work.81 A more recent Marxian analysis, which develops Djilas'assessment further, is that of Ivan Szelenyi, a Hungarian sociologist who was forced to emigrate when he would not renounce his views. He argues that, with the development of state-socialist economies in the post-Stalin era, a new dominating class has developed.82 This is rather broader than the political bureaucracy described by Djilas. It is the intelligentsia as a whole which has grasped class power. In Eastern Europe, Szelenyi points out, people move constantly between important "bureaucratic" and "intellectual" positions. Thus: The present director of one of the comedy theaters in Budapest is a former high-ranking officer of the political police. His former boss in the Hungarian equivalent of the KGB is today the manager of a big salaini factory. Today one may be an officer in the political police, but tomorrow one might be the only person licensed to produce politicaljokes, or one might supervise salami production or sociological research, as a manager or an academic. The line between intellectuals and bureaucrats is a very shaky one in terms of personal career patterns.... (It) is practically impossible to distinguish between the technobureaucracy and the intelligentsia. Their living standards are practically identical. It is the level of power which stratifies them.83 Szelenyi argues that state-socialism shows that Marx was wrong to believe that property ownership was the major determinant of power. He believes, at the same time, that a "historical materialist" perspective in the Marxian tradition remains valid. Marx, he argues, defined his classes on the basis of ownership relations beca use in a capitalist market economy it was the private ownership of the means of production which legitimated expropriation.84 In socialist countries, by contrast, it is not property ownership and the market which define income and the distribution of "the surplus"-defined by Marxists as the difference between what labor produces and what is,,.needed to keep it alive. Instead, the state expropriates and allocates the surplus. "Contemporary state socialism might be characterized by the antagonism between redistributors and direct producers.1185 These "redistributors" use Marxist ideals to legitimate their seizure of power as creators of a "scientifically" planned economy. Szelenyi (and, by implication, Djilas) are contrasting socialist countries 'with Western ones, where they see classes with different relationships to private property as still the major groupings. By contrast, conflict theorists in the Weberian tradition would tend to see their analyses as strengthening the case for discussing power and conflict in terms of several different categories-class being one, political power another. Thus, Djilas' major point can be applied generally to argue that government employees should be viewed as a distinctive group with their own interests and power base86 and that there are conflicts of interest between those who do and do not benefit from increased government spending and activity.87 In this context, Erik Olin Wright's work is of special interest. It attempts to show, empirically, that analyzing American society in terms of classes (in Marx's sense) is indeed the most fruitful approach to take. In his Class Structure and Income Determination, Wright used detailed survey data88 to examine how well Marxist categories "explain" (that is, can be used to predict) income, compared to such common occupational categories as "upper white collar," "lower white collar," "lower blue collar," "farmers,"or "service workers." Wright defines classes in terms of their members'control over money and physical capital, and others' labor. This produces the classic Marxist categories of the "bourgeoisie," who control capital and direct labor; and the "proletariat," who do neither. However, when he applies these categories to the modern workforce, only about I to 2 percent of workers can be classified as "bourgeoisie"; and almost half are seen as falling into "contradictory" class locations-that is, not quite one thing or another. The latter are 1. managers and supervisors (30-35 percent of the workforce) 2. semiautonomous employees 3. small employers (with "minimal" control over labor) With so few bourgeoisie, by his definition, in existence, the survey data did not actually provide Wright with enough cases for analysis.89 In practice, therefore, he looked at five "classes"-small employers, managers, supervisors, workers, and petty bourgeoisie (self-employed with no employees). On that basis he found that class did affect income: People occupying different class positions but with the same level of education and occupational status, the same age and seniority on the job, the same general social background, and working the same number of hours per year, will still differ substantially in their expected incomes. And people in different class positions can expect to receive different amounts of additional income per increment in educational credentials, even if they do not differ in a variety of other characteristics.90 Figure 3-1 summarizes, for Wright, what these findings imply about the workings of American society.91 However, class position actually accounts for only 20 percent of the variation in people's incomes-no worse, but also no better, than the stan- dard (though more complicated) census-based occupational codes. This figure; the need to put so many people into "contradictory" categories (which are not clear Marxist classes at all); and the fact that the importance of the bourgeoisie is simply assumed (since it does not appear in the data), mean that critics of Marxist analysis are no more convinced than before that "class" (used in this sense) is the primary factor in the analysis of society. Wright, they would argue, merely shows what we already knowthat your position in the labor market affects your income! Marxist Analysis: An Assessment Marx's most important contributions to social analysis in general derive from two sources: his emphasis on the way that people in the same economic position tend to group together for common action and his explanation of why and how societies differ in terms of the characteristics of the groups that are generated by their economic life. As Kolokowski has noted, "No reasonable person would deny that the doctrine of historical materialism has been a valuable addition to our intellectual equipment ... (I)f it has become a commonplace, this is largely thanks to Marx's originality."92 However, this insistence on the primacy of economics means that Marxist analysts have a tendency to use a "Catch-22" approach. They assume in advance that economic and business interests lie behind things, proceed to find them, and then offer their explanation as "proof " of the original proposition. But the fact that on any particular occasion, one can generally find businessmen and others seeking to advance their economic interests means neither that this is the "real" explanation of what is going on nor that those involved are necessarily acting in the interests of their class as a whole. The American South offers a good example of both the strengths and the weaknesses of Marxist analysis. Because of its focus on property relationships, Marxism identifies the pre-Civil War slave-owning South as a distinctive social order based on the ownership of human beings. A great part of the written history of the South and the Civil War has tended to interpret the South as essentially agrarian and so threatened by industrialization-or as itself merely a variant of capitalism, based on the plantation.s. As Eugene Genovese, the leading Marxist historian of the South, argues, neither approach explains the antagonism between North and South or the Civil War. An agrarian hinterland can grow prosperous as a market for manufactured goods and a supplier of food; and competition between farmer and industrialist is hardly a common cause of war. Or if Lhe South was basically capitalist, why could the two sides not reach an accommodations? However, once we see slavery as the essence of Southern society and not just one of its characteristics among many, however morally repugnant, it is apparent that the South was fighting to preserve a distinctive world. Much about the politics of the South also becomes comprehensible when we see it as a defense of this slavery-based social structure against not only the blacks who suffered under it but also other potential social groups whose interests it did not serve. Thomas Sowell, for example, points out that forced labor is always extremely inefficient economically.94 A Southern slave's labor was potentially worth much more to him than to his owner, ;ince he would work far harder and more productively for himself than forced and driven for someone else. Even without adding in the price he would pay just to be free, "Selling a slave to the highest bidder would mean selling him to himself"95-a practice that was very common among slaveowning profit-maximizing Romans. However, although this might profit individual slave-owners and the slaves themselves, it would certainly have undermined a society whose defining core was plantation slavery and whose ethic was fundamentally anticapitalist. Thus, very severe legal restrictions developed on the freeing of slaves. However, Marxist theory does not explain adequately why the white population of the South supported this order so wholeheartedly, even through the terrible rigors of the Civil War.96 Most whites were not slaveowning, and the poorly functioning Southern economy did not serve their economic interests any more than it did those of nascent industrialists facing a meager home market. Their support, we would argue, can only be explained fully by the fact that the racial character of Southern society gave every white an automatic claim to superior status, so that "The notion that all men were created equal contradicted the facts of daily experience for most Southerners. "97 Class interests are an even less adequate explanation of the system of racial segregation that succeeded slavery, under which the old classes of slaves and slave-owners no longer existed. The system of segregation was clearly against the interests of industrialists, for it denied skills to a large section of their potential work force; and under segregation, white and black "proletarians" conspicuously failed to group together to further shared class interests. The system did, however, offer benefits to whites as a whole-and benefits that were real, not a matter of "false consciousness." Their race alone gave them substantial advantages in power and opportunities-better education, for example, and less chance of being treated unjustly by the courts and police. Moreover, when change did come, it could also hardly be explained in terms of class conflict. Rather, it was the outcome of a civil rights movement, in which blacks of all classes and the power of the federal government were the essential agents of change. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL AND CRITICAL THEORY The work of the controversial group of theorists known as the "Frankfurt School" is currently very much in vogue among younger, left-wing sociologists. Their analysis of society owes a great deal to Marx, and like him, they emphasize the importance of conflicts of interest based on property relationships. However, they are by no means orthodox Marxists, and many of them bitterly attacked a Russian regime they saw as oppressive and dictatorial. They owe a major debt to Hegel, and they draw on Marx's early and more "Hegelian" work, such as his writings on alienation, more than on his later, more economic analyses.98 In addition, they are very interested in uniting psychoanalysis and Marxism: an effort towards which orthodox Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism) is highly unsympathetic. These different influences are apparent in the aspects of their "critical theory" described later: their view of social science, their critique of mass culture and its place in the "administered society," and Habermas' recasting of Marx's evolutionary theory. The Frankfurt School is so called because of its association with a single institution, the Institute of Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany. The Institute was founded in 1923 with funds from one of its members, Felix Weil, and his wealthy father; and its most important members were Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), and Erich Fromm (1900-1980). All of them came from comfortable, middle-class Jewish homes, and all had fled Germany for America by the mid-1930s because their political views made the continuation of the Institute impossible. Marcuse remained in the United States and worked for the American State Department until the Korean War, when he returned to academic life. He taught at Columbia, Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California, San Diego. Fromm, who broke with the Institute soon after his arrival in America, practiced psychoanalysis in New York and became a founder and trustee of the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. In 1949 he moved to Mexico because of his wife's health. There he started the Department of Psychoanalysis at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and founded and directed the Mexican Psychoanalytic Institute, while still commuting regularly to the United States and academic appointments in New York and Michigan. Adorno and Horkheimer were persuaded by the city and University of Frankfurt to return to Germany, where the Institute was reestablished in 1949.99 During the postwar period, they became estranged from Marcuse. Horkheimer's attitudes toward liberal capitalism changed; he came to regard it as a form of society to be protected against the encroachment of totalitarian administration."100 Marcuse regarded this position as a betrayal of the group's beliefs.101 The most important younger member of the Frankfurt School is Jurgen Habermas, who was born in Dusseldorf in 1929. In 1961, at an unusually young age for a German academic, he became professor of philosophy and sociology at Heidelberg, and in 1964 he was awarded the Chair at Frankfurt and made Co-Director of the Philosophical Seminary. He left Frankfurt in 1971 to become Director of Munich's Max Planck Institute for the Study of Life in Technical and Scientific Society, but has since returned to the city. Although the foremost members of the Frankfurt School were not themselves actively involved in politics, their work has been very influential among German student radicals in recent years; furtherihore, as we mentioned above, Marcuse was a writer of great importance ,to the American New Left. Consequently, they are highly controversial and were, for example, accused by the Minister President of one Wes( German state of being directly responsible for the wave of urban terrorism in Germany. Nevertheless, there was considerable disagreement between the German student radicals and the Frankfurt School theorists. Habermas, who became generally known at this period, emphasized repeatedly his solidarity with the movement as a whole, but he also denounced the views of some of its extremist leaders as "left-fascism," defended the importance of democratic institutions and the rule of law, and attacked the use of violence. Adorno had his classes broken up by students who considered him inadequately revolutionary. Critical Theory and the Nature of Social Science At the core of the Frankfurt School's approach to social analysis are two propositions. The first is that people's ideas are a product of the society in which they live. Because our thought is socially formed, they argue, it is impossible for us to reach objective knowledge and conclusions, free of the influence of our particular era and its conceptual patterns. The second proposition is that intellectuals should not try to be objective and to separate fact from value judgment in their work. What they should adopt instead is a critical attitude to the society they are examining; an attitude that makes people aware of what they should do and has as its aim social change. Equally, intellectuals should - maintain a critical attitude toward their work; they should examine and make explicit its relationship to the current state of society and socially created "knowledge." It does not follow, however, that critical theorists cogsider one critical attitude to be as good as another. Unlike Marx, they admit that since they too are products of a particular society, their own work is subject to its influences and is not uniquely objective. Nevertheless, they also believe that there are such things as truth and knowledge and that their normative approach brings them closer to these than does mainstream, or "positivist," social science, 102 with its attempts to separate value judgments from analysis. In their critique the Frankfurt analysts adopt the dialectical method of Marx and Hegel, emphasize the importance of a society's economic organization, and argue that "the class-related form of ... work puts its mark on all human patterns of reaction."103 Critical theory, Horkheimer argues, "does not ... fall victim to the illusion that property and profit no longer play a key role, an illusion carefully fostered in' the social sciences."104 By contrast, "traditional" theory is itself part of the production process, and so it is "in the service of an existing reality."105 The modern economy, Horkheimer argues, "after an enormous extension of human control over nature, finally hinders further development and drives humanity into a new barbarism."106 Critical theory incorporates this insight and is "the unfolding of a single existentialjudgment."107 The ideal standard by which critical theory judges the present is closer to the concept of reason as it is used by Hegel and other German philosophers than it is to Marx. Horkheimer, for example, argues that "the free development of individuals depends on the rational constitution of society"108 and that in a rational society, there will cease to be a conflict between mankind's potentialities and the organization of society around work. However, what a "rational" society would be like remains almost totally unclear; and the Frankfurt analysts share none of Marx's confidence that it will one day be realized. In reply, defenders of traditional social science argue that whether or not a writer can avoid incorporating his own values into his work, his theory, like a bridge built according to "twentieth-century science," stands or falls by the accuracy of the theory's factual predictions-and that these can be judged objectively. They also question whether critical theory has any reason to claim that it is less context-bound than other approaches. Jurgen Habermas has attempted to deal with this latter question and so "legitimate" critical theory through the concept of an "ideal-speech situation."109 In such a situation, everyone would have an equal chance to argue and question; since they are more rational, true positions would prevail. Habermas believes that a "radical critique of knowledge" can go beyond the systematically distorted communication that marks human society, and that utterances can be "rationally" reconstructed in universal terms-an idea he discusses under the label of "universal pragmatics" In this context he criticizes sociologists (such as some symbolic interactionists) who confine themselves to individuals' own subjective understanding. These should, rather, be integrated with a critique of underlying ideologies that are related to social, political, and economic conditions, and can conceal and distort experience and communication. This seems to amount to saying that in the right circumstances arguments can be judged objectively after all, and that in an "ideal-speech situation," critical theory and its values and judgments would appear as objectively correct because they are based on less distorted communication than other approaches. Many critics dispute this claim, arguing that although facts can be observed objectively in the ordinary way of things, there are genuine and irreconcilable differences of judgment concerning values and what is good or best. They also question whether Habermas has really improved on his predecessors' definition of reason-or rather their lack of it, since he has not actually specified the norms which would be defined. I 10 Culture, Personality, and the Administered Society The Frankfurt analysts consider themselves "materialists" because of their emphasis on the importance of economic organization. During the 1930s, for example, they argued consistently that fascism was rooted in capitalism. For the most part, however, their studies are concerned with aspects of personality, culture, and thought, and not with social institutions. Horkheimer, Adorno, and their colleagues have always affirmed that thought and personality are rooted in the economic system; but unlike more orthodox Marxists they also argue that culture and ideology can play an independent role in society and that pure economic determinism is simplistic. Personality and Social Structure Much of the most important work in critical theory was carried out at a time when psychoanalysis was first becoming widely known and influential. The Frankfurt analysts were very interested in analyzing personality and behavior in terms of the interaction between the "socioeconomic substructure" and basic psychic drives. Their analyses are highly normative, emphasizing the way the economic system distorts or cripples the personality. Erich Fromm shows the greatest interest in psychoanalysis. During the 1930s, when he was a central member of the group, Fromm was interested in the way a particular "libidinal" structure, formed and passed on in the family, could act as a social cement. At this period he argued that, for example, the "capitalist spirit" of rationality, possessiveness, and puritanism was linked to anal repression and orderliness. III Later, his analyses centered around the idea of "alienation," which he uses rather differently from Marx, to describe an individual's psychological experiences of the world. Fromm argues that alienation is the "central issue ... (in discussing) the effects of capitalism on personality."' 12 Under capitalism, workers and managers alike are alienated because they are denied such "basic needs" as creativity and identity. Their work is entirely impersonal; their consumption is also alienated, for they acquire possessions whether or not they use or appreciate them; they are motivated by self-interest, not love, in their relationships with others; and they see themselves as "doctors" or "clerks," not people.113 The Frankfurt analysts indict modern society similarly in their massive study of the "authoritarian personality." This is the most famous of the series on prejudice and anti-Semitism that Adorno, Horkheimer, and their colleagues conducted in America, and presented clearly Adorno's views on the connections between personality and social structure.114 The Authoritarian Personality concluded that the most prejudiced and anti-democratic individuals had distinctive personalities and came, on the whole, from homes where relationships between parent and child were characterized by dominance and submission and where family members were very intolerant of a lack of conformity. In other words, the factors that precipitate prejudice were clearly seen as psychological. At the same time, however, Adorno argued that the whole sample showed marked similarities in important degrees. The most prejudiced individuals simply demonstrated more clearly the overall and potentially fascistic cultural pattern produced by the social structure. The prejudiced person "must largely be considered the outcome of our civilization. The increasing disproportion of the various psychological 'agencies' within the total personality is undoubtedly being reinforced by such tendencies in our culture as division of labor, the increased importance of monopolies and institutions, and the dominance of the idea of exchange and of success and., competition." 115 The Critique of Mass Culture Critical theory's discussion of culture displays the same deep pessimism as does its analysis of personality. Horkheimer argues that culture and ideology are not a simple reflection of the economic substructure, but a semiautonomous realm. They are crucial in maintaining and strengthening the existing order: "the obsolete social order is quickly patched up ... (and) the antiquated cultural apparatus, in the form of the mental state of society's members as well as the network of concrete institutions, gains new force."' 16 To the members of the Frankfurt School, popular culture is a means of manipulating the inhabitants of a totally "administered" society. Thus, Adorno attacked jazz and popular music for its standardization, for distracting people and making them passive, and therefore for strengthening the current social order. jazz, he argued, increases alienation. 117 He similarly despised astrology and the "attraction to the occult," which he called "a symptom of the retrogression of consciousness."118 People turn to astrology, he argues, in an attempt to lure meaning out of a "frozen" world where humanity's "domination over nature, by turning into domination over man, surpasses all the horrors that man ever had to fear from nature."' I" Its practitioners exploit their clients, and by providing psychological reassurance they help sustain the current social structure. In his examination of the Los Angeles Times astrology column,120 Adorno notes that the column's implication that work and pleasure are to be kept strictly apart befits a society in which people's functions as producers are rigidly divided from their consumption. He argues that The columnist is very well aware of the drudgery of most subordinate functions in a hierarchical and bureaucratic setup . . .-(People) are encouraged to fulfill little and insignificant set tasks in a machinery. Thus, the admonition to work and not to allow oneself to be distracted by any instinctual interference has frequently the form that one should attend to one's "chores." Dismal early A.M., forgotten by plunging into routine chores. (November 21, 1952, Leo) Keeping plugging at chores... (December 19, 1952, Sagittarius) Stick to attending chores... (December 27, 1952, Sagittarius)121 In America, the best-known "critical analysis" of mass culture remains Herbert Marcuse's. In One-Dimensional Man he paints a bleak picture of modern industrial societies in both the West and the Communist world. 122 Marcuse is more of a technological determinist than his former colleagues: he states that technical progress has made possible a "whole system of domination and coordination" that defeats all protests. Social control in the interests of the status quo, including conditioning by the mass media, is so powerful that even thought provides no source of criticism: it too is subor- dinated. Affluence assimilates into the existing order all those who once dissented, and in return for material goods, people give up liberty. In doing so, they surrender to "false needs," which are "superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression."123 Culture has been flattened in what Marcuse views as a totalitarian social order which has succeeded the previous liberal one and which has become "onedimensional" because it has eliminated alternative ideas. Marcuse's distaste for modern culture has struck a responsive chord, for very many of us have at some time been nauseated by yet more T.V. advertising, or by the thought of life lived in "little boxes all the same." However, he has also aroused numerous critics. It is frequently pointed out, for example, that Marcuse's own work refutes his claim that all criticism has been suppressed, and that his writings generally advance little empirical evidence in support of his claims. Critics also disagree with his assertion that all industrial societies are essentially and similarly totalitarian; and they question his and other critical theorists' conviction that they, unlike the mass of people, know what people's "real needs" are. Evolution and Crisis Unlike Marxism, which is essentially a theory of evolution, the analy- ses of the older Frankfurt analysts focus on contemporary developments. Recently, however, Jurgen Habermas, the most important active analyst in the Frankfurt tradition, has recast Marx's theory. He pays particular attention to the developments of the last century and the force of change apparent in modern society. 124 Habermas divides "social formations" into the categories shown in Figure 3-2. "Primitive" societies are comparable to Marx's tribal ones; "tra- ditional" societies would include both "ancient" and "feudal" ones; "liberal capitalist" describes the nineteenth-century capitalism Marx knew; and our own Western societies are examples of "organized" capitalism. Habermas classifies "state-socialist" societies as "post-capitalist" class societies "in view of their political-elitist disposition of the means of production."125 Habermas' mode of analysis is similar to Marx's in that he sees social evolution as a result of crises or "contradictions" inherent in a given system. These create "steering problems," which eventually make the system untenable. However, like other critical theorists, Habermas emphasizes the role played by people's ideas and consciousness. Underlying structural changes and contradictions manifest themselves in the breakdown of shared values or "normative structures"; and the old social system disintegrates because such changes threaten people's feeling of social identity (and therefore social integration).126 In discussing such breakdowns, Habermas focuses very much on the political organization of societies. "Legitimacy means a political order's worthiness to be recognized," he has argued; and "problems of legitimacy are not a speciality of modern times.... In traditional societies, legitimation conflicts typically take the form of prophetic and messianic movements that turn against the official version of religious doctrine."127 This is because it is here that the contradiction between the privileges of the dominant ruling class and the normative system of ideas which is supposed to legitimize them becomes apparent. Examples are the Hebrew prophets or the heretical movements of the Middle Ages. This does not, however, make legitimation crises in the state something separate from class conflicts. On the contrary; it is through the development of the state that societies moved away from production by and for families to a situation in which a dominating class appropriated wealth. Habermas' focus on ideas as the mechanism of change makes his treatment very different from that of Marx, who treats the development of modern industry as a deus ex machina that catapulted mankind from feudal. into capitalist society. Instead, it displays interesting parallels both with Schumpeter's approach, where the way capitalism destroys its own legitimacy was discussed as the central force behind its inevitable demise; and with that of some leading nonradical economic historians, who also focus on the role of the state, and of "ideology," in determining how wealth is distributed. 128 According to Habermas, the distinctive characteristic of liberal capitalism is the "depoliticization of the class relationship."129 Before, control of the state by a small group was of central importance; whereas under liberal capitalism there is self-regulated market commerce, and the state's role is simply to maintain the general conditions of capitalistic production, especially civil law. Like Weber or Marcuse, Habermas notes the cumulative process of "rationalization" under capitalism and the corresponding disintegration of both traditional habits and the justification of practices by an appeal to tradition. Moreover, like Talcott Parsons (to whom he acknowledges an intellectual debt),130 he notes the general expansion of the secular domain and a shift from "tribal particularism to universalistic and at the same time individualistic orientations."131 However, in analyzing the probable development of modern society,, Habermas believes that the trend from myth, through religion, to philosophy and ideology is of prime importance.132 It means that "normative validity claims" (that is, arguments that something ought to be so) must be justified more and more explicitly. Instead of relying on appeals to tradition and authority, capitalism has based its claim to legitimacy on the notion that market exchange between equals is just. However, in a society where legitimacy rests on the workings of the market, economic fluctuations are direct threats to social integration. Such fluctuations make it apparent to both the workers and the owners of the means of production that their market ideology is incorrect, that the market is not, in fact, a meetingplace of equals, but a form of institutionalized power. 133 In his discussion of contemporary "organized capitalism," Habermas is concerned above all with whether it has resolved this "fundamental con- tradiction." His answer is that it has not. There are serious "crisis tendencies" in modern Western societies, the most important of which undermine its legitimacy. Habermas believes that the transition from liberal to organized capitalism involves two changes. The first is the rise of huge, oligopolistic firms and the disappearance of competitive capitalism. The second is the reemergence of the state, which increasingly replaces and intervenes in the market (thus signaling the end of liberal capitalism). In large part, the state's reemergence is a response to economic fluctuations and "steering problems." The state attempts to regulate the economic cycle and.maintain growth and full employment; spends on education and research; provides the infrastructure of roads and utilities; and reduces the "social and material costs resulting from private production" through unemployment benefits, welfare, and the like. 134 The profit motive and the "continued private appropriation ... of surplus value" remain cruc ial, however. 135 The "recoupling" of the state and the economic system creates, Habermas argues, an increased need for legitimation; and in a rationalistic age, the legitimation must be formal and explicit. Since the old bourgeois ideology of fair exchange has broken down, the alternative is a system of "formal democracy."136 Genuine participation in decision-making would, he argues, make people aware of the contradictions in a society where production is the state's concern, but "surplus value" is individually appropriated. This system is fragile, however. Habermas, following Marx, believes that the economic system itself is threatened by a falling rate ot profit. Moreover, there is likely to be insufficient loyalty to the political system and a consequent "legitimation crisis." In its early days, capitalism had the remnants of tradition to maintain it. Now its own rationality has undermined traditions, and previously unquestioned norms and loyalties are publicly discussed and thereby weakened. Related changes within the family further destroy the residues of tradition and the casts of mind that upheld the capitalist order.137 While prebourgeois, authoritarian patterns of upbringing survived, people accepted rule by an elite rather than demanding participation; 138 but these patterns are vanishing, helped on their way by a self-conscious analysis of the ways we socialize children. Such an analysis further reduces the effectiveness of traditional child-rearing because the latter's force depended on people not questioning it. Finally, the ideology of achievement is also disappearing. The welfare state makes hard work less important, and in a modern economy it is increasingly difficult to reward people for individual effort and hold them personally accountable. Habermas looks forward to a time when "the 'pursuit of happiness' might. . . mean something different-for example, not accumulating material objects of which one disposes privately, but bringing about social relations in which ... satisfaction does not mean the triumpli of one over the repressed needs of the other."139 Nonetheless, he is by no means confident of the arrival of a "rational" society; and his critics, including fellow-sociologists of the left, have questioned some of the essential parts of his argument. Habermas' analysis treats as basically self-evident the claim that a society must have one consistent legitimating set of norms, accepted by its inhabitants-a very Parsonian view. However, as van den Berg has pointed out, he does not actually provide any proof of this. It is thus quite possible to argue that "different value orientations can and do exist within the same system without any disastrous effects on its stability"140-that contradictions do not, necessarily, produce systemic change. At the same time, the values and opinions people have-in the West, but also and notably in state socialist" countries such as Russia-call into question Habermas' belief that, in modern society, explicit, "rational" legitimation is necessary. In fact, many Russians seem to hold extremely traditional values, including passive acceptance of an autocratic state, 141 implying that a "modern" state may still be able to maintain its legitimacy on "old-fashioned" foundations. Summary Critical theorists' analyses of the role of ideas and culture in social stability and change, and their discussions of the evolution of modern society away from nineteenth-century capitalism are their most important contributions to social theory. However, many commentators have attacked their view of social science in general and Marcuse's views of modern culture in particular. As we shall see in the next section, many theoristsincluding other conflict theorists-also disagree with critical theory's continuing emphasis on the role of private property and profit, which both Habermas and the older Frankfurt theorists derive from Marx. C. WRIGHT MILLS Among American sociologists, C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) is the best known modern theorist whose work combines a conflict perspective with a strong critique of the social order. Mills was born and raised in Texas; he never left the state until he was in his twenties, when he won a research fellowship to the University of Wisconsin. Most of his academic career was spent at Columbia, where he was a professor until he died of a heart condition while still in his mid-forties. Mills was subjected to a barrage of criticism, especially in his later years when,his writing became increasingly accusatory and polemical. He also had many admirers and was never quite the "lone wolf " he considered himself; but he was increasingly agonized and pessimistic about the immediate future. He believed that immorality was built into the American system; and he never voted because he considered political parties to be manipulative and "irrational" organizations. He also bitterly attacked his fellow-intellectuals for abdicating their social responsibilities and for putting themselves at the service of men of power while they hid behind a mask of "value-free" analysis. Mills thought that it was possible to create a "good society" on the basis of knowledge and that men of knowledge must take responsibility for its absence.142 He believed in a libertarian socialism, and he supported the Cuban revolution (and attacked the United States'reaction to it) because he hoped that it would combine revolutionary socialism and freedom. 143 In his sociology, his major themes were the relationship between bureaucracy and alienation and the centralization of power in a "power elite." Both these subjects were aspects of his attack on modern American society. Alienation and Bureaucracy Mills argues that the material hardships of the workers of the past have been replaced today by a psychological malaise, which is rooted in workers' alienation from what they make.144 He sees white-collar workers as apathetic, frightened, and molded by mass culture. In modern society, he argues, "those who hold power have often come to exercise it in hidden ways: they have moved and are moving from authority to manipulation .... The rational systems hide their power so that no one sees their sources of authority or understands their calculation. For the bureaucracy . . . the world is an object to be manipulated."145 In a world of big business and big government, the ever-increasing group of white-collar people lives not by making things, but by helping to turn what someone else has made into profits for yet another person. Fewer and fewer people own their own productive property and control their own working lives. Stable communities and traditional values, which "fixed" people into society, have disappeared, and their disappearance throws the whole system of prestige or status into flux. Like Veblen, Mills believes that status and self-esteem are closely linked; and the loss of traditional values, he argues, undermines people's self-esteem and embroits them in a status "panic." 146 In fact, Mills' concerns here are curiously like those of Durkheim and the functionalists, who see modern society as threatened by normlessness, or "anomie." His critics argue that he ignores the freedom that the breakup of old and restrictive communities can offer. Unlike Marx, Mills does not believe that work is necessarily the crucial expression of oneself but he does condemn modern bureaucratic capitalism for alienating people from both the process and product of work. This is particularly clear, Mills argues, with white-collar workers like salespeople, whose personalities become commodities to be sold and for whom friendliness and courtesy are part of the "impersonal means of livelihood." 147Thus, he claims, "in all work involving the personality market, . . . one's personality and personal traits become part of the means of production ... (which) has carried self and social alienation to explicit extremes." 148 Mills' emphasis on alienation derives from his concern with the rela- tionship between character and social structure. Salesmanship, he argues, estranges people from themselves and others because they view all rela- tionships as manipulative. 149 Alienation from work makes people turn frenziedly to leisure; but the entertainment industry.,,,,,produces synthetic excitement, which offers no real release and establishes no deep common values.150 Other aspects of social structure strengthen psychological ten- dencies that make modern societies liable to fascist or revolutionary totalitarian success.151 People's fragmented working environments give them little understanding of how society works, and they believe that the interventionist government is responsible for insecurity and misfortune. An increasingly centralized structure with no remaining traditional beliefs and with permanently anxious people is, Mills argues, highly vulnerable. The Power Elite Mills argues consistently that the growth of large structures has been accompanied by a centralization of power and that the men who head government, corporations, the armed forces, and the unions are very closely linked. He carries this part of his analysis the furthest in his discussion of the "power elite."152 Mills argues that America is ruled by a "power elite" made up of people who hold the dominant positions in political, military, and economic institutions. "Within the American society," he writes, "major national power now resides in the economic, the political and the military domains ... Within each of the big three, the typical institutional unit has become enlarged, has become administrative, and, in the power of its decisions, has become centralized ... (The) means of power at the disposal of centralized decision-making units have increased enormously."153 Mills argues, moreover, that the three domains are interlocked, so that "the leading men in each of the three domains of power-the warlords, the corporate chieftains, the political directorate-tend to come together to form the power elite of America: ... The military capitalism of private corporations exists in a weakened and formal democratic system containing an already quite politicized military order."154 Mills believed that power can be based on factors other than property. However, the unity of the elite's institutional interests brings them together and maintains a war economy. Mills' analysis coincided with and reinforced an attitude toward American society that was apparent in Eisenhower's denunciation of the "military-industrial complex." Many nonradical sociologists agree that econo- nomic life is increasingly intertwined with the activities of the government. However, they argue that it is not simply military expenditures that are important, but rather the increased involvement of government in all spheres of economic life. Those of us who live in Washington notice how, month by month, more and more industrial, trade, and labor associations set up headquarters in the city's burgeoning office blocks, close to the federal government and its power. Moreover, critics frequently disagree with Mills' perception of a single "power elite" pursuing its united interest and excluding others from influ- ence,155 The argue that powerful interests may-and frequently do conflict with each other. "Business," for example, undoubtedly has power. It gets some of the measures it wants, and some firms and industries acquire a protected, semimonopolistic position from government regulators. For others, however, plans are delayed or demolished by decisions about environmental quality, prices are set at levels they oppose, or costs are raised by taxes, government paperwork, pollution requirements, and the like. In general, Mills shares with Marxist sociology and the "elite theorists" a tendency to see society as divided rather sharply and horizontally between the powerful and the powerless. He also shares Marxist and neoMarxist theorists' concerns about alienation, the effects of social structure on the personality, and the "manipulation" of people by the mass media. At the same time, however, Mills clearly belongs to a distinctively American populist tradition, which does not regard property as such as the main source of evil in society. To Mills, small-scale property ownership and the class of independent entrepreneurs are the major safeguards of freedom and security, and he regrets the waning of the old American society of independent farmers and businessmen.156 Summary Of all contemporary sociological theories, those which combine a conflict perspective with social critique are the most clearly associated with arguments current outside academic life, especially among the politically involved. The political importance of these theorists is consequently greater than that of any other group we describe. This is especially evident outside the United States; but it is also true within it, as we can see from the following excerpt from the Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society, a central document of the student New Left of the 1960s. We find echoes of Marx's economic analysis, Mills'condemnation of the power elite, critical theory's view that society is "administered" and manipulated, and the concern of all these theories with people's alienation in its statement: We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love.... We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things.... We oppose, too, the doctrine of human incompetence because it rests essentially on the modern fact that men have been "competently" manipulated into incompetence.... The American political system ... frustrates democracy by confusing the individual citizen ... and consolidating the irresponsible power of military and business interests. We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege or circumstances by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity. As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation.... The economic sphere would have (among its) principles: that work should involve incentives worthier than money or survival... that the economic experience is so personally decisive that the individual must share in its full determination. Major social institutions should be generally organized with the well being and dignity of men as the essential measure of success.157 As we shall see in the next section, analytic conflict theory shares many of the general orientations of the "critical" conflict perspectives. The belief in an ideal society and the combination of analysis and moral outrage that the Port Huron Statement embodies are, however, as foreign to it as they are central to the work of the "critical" theorists we have just discussed.