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7 The Theory of Action Reclaimed Quid leges sine moribus vanae proficient? [Of what use are laws without morals?] Horace C: If you could converse with Talcott Parsons today, what would you say? HG: I would explain succinctly his only serious mis- take and suggest a way to correct this mistake. C: Would he agree? HG: In my dreams. Choreographer interview The analytical core for sociological theory proposed in the previous chap- ter includes a rational actor model inspired by Talcott Parsons’ voluntaristic theory of action (1937). My elaboration of this model, however, followed a differentpath from that taken by Parsons in his later work, which wandered away from the microfoundations of human behavior into the dusty realm of structural-functionalism. Big mistake. This chapter explains where and speculates why Parsons went wrong. Briefly, between writing The Structure of Social Action in 1937 and the publication of The Social System and Toward a General Theory of Action in 1951, Parsons abandoned the stress on individual efficacy of his early work (e.g., in his critique of positivism and behaviorism) in favor of treating the individual as the effect of socialization that when successful produces social order, and when unsuccessful produces social pathology. In The Structure of Social Action, Parsons mentions the term “socialization” only once, writing (pp. 400–401): Ultimate values of the individualmembers of the same commu- nity must be, to a significant degree, integrated into a system common to these members...not only moral attitudes but even the logical thought on which morality depends only develop as an aspect of the process of socialization of the child. Moreover, in The Structure of Social Action Parsons uses this fact only to show the impossibility of a “utilitarian” model of individual choice, by 140 TheTheory of Action Reclaimed 141 which he means a model in which individuals fail to share a common moral dimension. He writes (p. 401), “This evidence confirms the negative proof of the impossibility of a truly utilitarian society.” In 1951, in both The Social System and Toward a General Theory of Action, “socialization” is used con- stantly throughout. By contrast, the term “voluntarist,” liberally dispersed throughout The Structure of Social Action, is replaced by “general” in later versions of the theory of action. The term “voluntarist” appears not at all in The Social System and only in the Index of Toward a General Theory of Action—doubtless left there by mistake. Moreover, by 1951 Parsons has come to treat the demand for agents to fill social roles, which is determined by the social division of labor, and the supply of agents to fill social roles, which is determined by the socialization process, as not simply interrelated, but in fact identical. He writesin The Social System (Parsons 1951, p. 142): The allocation of personnel between roles in the social system and the socialization processes of the individual are clearly the same processes viewed in different perspectives. Allocation is the process seen in the perspective of functional significance to the social system as a system. Socialization on the other hand is the process seen in terms of the motivation of the individual actor. By the time he wrote Economy and Society with Neil Smelser in 1956, noth- ing is left of individual action at all, the economy being simply a system of intersectoral flows and boundary interchanges with other social subsystems. The individual becomes for Parsons like a cell in the metazoan body, hav- ing important work to do to maintain the organism (the social system), but either doing it well or poorly. It cannot affect the organization of the system itself. The idea that the demand for agents to fill social roles and the supply of agents capable of and willing to fill these roles are identical is not simply false. It is preposterous. I cannot understand how Parsons could come to this conclusion, or why his close friends and colleagues did not call him on this. In terms of the general social equilibrium model developed in the previous chapter, Parsons’ claim would take the form of asserting that markets for social roles are always in equilibrium. In fact, the ensemble of social roles follows quite a different logic from the ensemble of individuals with the motivations and capacities to fill these roles. In a dynamic society, the two 142 Chapter7 are rarely if ever in equilibrium, although there may be strong tendencies towards equilibrium. Parsons’ possibly thought, following his assignment of “positive” to eco- nomics and “normative” to sociology, that economic theory could deal with the skills and incentives side of the supply and demand for role positions, leaving sociology to attend to the normative side of the equation. While it would be far-fetched to maintain that the supply and demand for various types of agent services are always in equilibrium, it is bordering on plau- sible that socialization could flexibly adjust to the motivational needs of society by suitably restricting which actions are allowed and which are not. Indeed, Parsons’ positive vs. normative distinction between economics and sociology lends itself to this treatment. Then the economic subsystem could be in dynamic movement while the normative subsystem is in equilibrium. But this way of carving up the social world is not in fact tenable. Two theoretical commitments appear to have led Parsons to identify eco- nomics vs. sociology with positive-rational action vs. normative-nonrational action. The first is his treatment of socialization as the internalization of a society’s universal and pervasive culture. As we have seen, this treatment, as opposed to a more plausible construct in which socialization reflects and codifies individuals positions in the variety of social networks in which they participate, leads directly to a deeply functionalist view of the supply and demand of role positions. The second commitment is that rational choice is instrumental to the achievement of material goals. Viewed in this way, much of human action, including morality-motivated choices, appears to be nonrational. Parsons’ instrumental understanding of the rational actor model appears early in The Structure of Social Action. He writes (Parsons 1937, p. 44): An “act” involves logically the following: (1)... an agent ...(2)...an “end”...(3)...and a “situation”...This situation is in turn analyzable into two elements: those over which the ac- tor has no control...and those over which he has such control. The former may be termed the “conditions” of action, the latter the “means”...Finally (4)...in the choice of alternative means to the end...there is a “normative orientation” of action. It is challenging to cast this notion of an act (or what Parsons generally calls a “unit act”) into the modern rational actor framework. Parsons defines the “end” as “a future state of affairs toward which the process of action TheTheory of Action Reclaimed 143 is oriented.” This concept is missing in the contemporary rational actor model. The reason for this is that rational choice theory as developed in this book, and as inspired by von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944) and Savage (1954), does not presume instrumental rationality—the notion that behavior is always oriented towards some specific goal and rationality takes the form of choosing the best action towardsachieving that goal. Rather, we use the more restricted notion of formal rationality, which merely means that the Savage axioms, which say nothing about ends or goals, are obeyed. The problem with the instrumental interpretation of rational choice is that often agents are in situations where they must make choices but they have no clear notion of what the goals of action are. For instance, if I see someone fainton a New York subway platform,I must choose how to react, but I have no obvious goal. Indeed several distinct considerations must be adjudicated in deciding how to act. Similarly, subjects in the behavioral economics laboratory may have no well-defined goals. They may have come with the goal of making money, but they often do not maximize their monetary rewards. The “means” for Parsons include the agent’s capacity to choose among alternatives according to his preferences and beliefs towards attaining the “end,” and the “conditions” are the objective and observable personal and social relations that form the context of choice. A search through Structure fails to elucidate Parsons’ notion of “conditions,” except that he tends to attribute to “positivism” the notion that “conditions” determine choices; i.e., that the voluntaristic and subjective factors in behavior are absent. What appears novel, and what Parsons contends is preeminently socio- logical, is element (4), involving a “normative orientation.” One might expect Parsons to devote some effort to explicate this model. Does not one need a “moral preferencefunction”of some sort to evaluate al- ternative choices leading to a particular “end”? Will not alternative choices leading to the same “end” have additional costs or benefits that must be balanced against the normative value of the choice? Might we not actually choose our ends taking into consideration the normative costs and benefits of attaining these ends? Parsons never in his work directly addresses these obvious questions. He appears to hold that we cannot make utility cal- culations involving alternative material and moral aspects of our choices. Rather, for each given end there is a set of feasible choices leading to that end and normative considerations eliminate some of these choices while permitting others. The properly socialized individual will simply limit his 144 Chapter7 choice set to those that are normatively permissible. The choice among what remains is then the business of economics, not sociology. Indeed, Parsons distinguishes economics from sociology precisely by defining the former as studying how agents rationally choose means to satisfy ends, while the latter studies the normative restrictions on choice that make the social order possible.
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