Reclaiming Parsons’ Theory of Action

Herbert Gintis

August 30, 2016

Q: If you could c;onverse with today, what would you say? HG: I would explain succinctly his only serious mis- take and suggesta way to correct this mistake. Q: Would he agree? HG: In my dreams. Fantasy Interview

This paper explains where and speculates why Parsons went wrong in aban- doning the theory of action developed in his masterpiece, The Structure of Social Action (1937) in favor of structural-functionalism. Briefly, between writing this book and the publication of The Social System and Toward a General Theory of Action in 1951, Parsons weakened the stress on individual efficacy of his early work (e.g., in his critique of positivism and ) 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 Ac- tion, Parsons mentions the term “socialization” only once, writing (pp. 400–401):

Ultimate values of the individual members of the same community 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” theory of individual choice, by which he means a theory 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.” By contrast, in 1951, in both The Social System and Toward a General Theory of Action, “socialization” is used constantly throughout. In addi- tion, the term “voluntarist,” liberally dispersed throughout The Structure of Social

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1 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 To- ward 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 writes in The Social System (Parsons 1951, p. 142):

The allocation of personnel between roles in the social system and the socializationprocesses of the individualare 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, nothing 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 be- comes for Parsons like a cell in the body, having 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 pre- posterous. Parsons’ claim makes sense only if 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 are rarely if ever in equilibrium, although there may be more or less effective tendenci