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CONSTRUCTION
JUERGEN H A B E R M A S
ABSTRACT
According to Professor Habermas, Parsons's later system para-
digm is in conflict, to some extent, with his earlier action paradigm, as
Menzies contended; but Parsons concealed the conflicts from himself,
Habermas thinks, and retained his "cultural determinism" and "secret
idealism." According to Habermas, Parsons lacked any adequate equiv-
alent of the concept of a "life world" built up on the basis of inter-
subjective communication. Parsons's unrealistic assumption of harmony
between actors' orientations on the one hand and functional require-
ments of systems on the other prevented him, according to Habermas,
from seeing what Marx for example saw, namely that in modem society-
the symbolic life worlds of actors suffer distortion because of their sub-
ordination to the rationalizing tendencies of money and power. (Pro-
fessor Habermas did not provide an abstract for this translation of his
address on Parsons, which he delivered to the German Sociological
Association in 1980. Readers are urged to regard this abstract as only
suggestive and as inadequately reflecting a complex argument.^Editor.)
Talcott Parsons died on the 8th of May last year [1979] in Munich.
His death came a few days after a cedle)quium in Heidelberg (Schluchter,
1980), given em the exxasion erf the reissuance erf his dex;toral degree. The
German Sociole>gical Association Council has asked me to talk abenit Parsons.
It serves a discipline well to honor one erf its members who even while still
living had attained the status of a classic.
No one of his contemporaries developed a theory of se>dety erf com-
parable complexity. An intellectual autobiography, published by Parsons in
1974 (Parsons, 1977:22ff), gives us a first impression erf the perseverance
and the cumulative results of efforts that this scientist devoted to the con-
struction of eme theory over the course erf more than fifty years. With regard
to its level of abstraction, its complexity, theoretical sce)pe, systematicity, and
groimeling in the literature of relevant branches erf research his published
work simply has no competitor to this time. Furthermore, no one else ame>tig
the prexiuctive theorists of sex:iety has conducted a continuing eiebate with
the classics erf our eiiscipline with equal intensity and persistence in eirder
to build on received tradition. One need not share Parsons's (1937) con-
viction that cemvergence among the great theoretical traditions itself consti-
tutes prexrf of the validity of his own approach to building theewy. But his
173
174 QUESTIONS ABOUT ACTION THEORY
very ability to work through and incorporate the best traditions into his own
approach remains eloquent testimony of the power of theories of society
which are aimed at the establishment of one particular paradigm grounded
in the collective everyday consciousness erf society itself. Throughout his
life. Parsons relied on the theoretical work of Durkheim, Weber, and Freud
as one frame of reference that controlled his own efforts. But that meant not
only that he continuemsly distinguished his own approach from empiricism,
it also amounted to maintaining his distance from Marx and Mead, from a
materialist as well as a pragmatic mode of theory construction inspired by
the critical tradition erf Kant and Hegel.' In addition, one fact remains
rather puzzling: the influence of Whitehead on the early work and rather
vague references to Kant in the last writings (Parsons, 1978) aside,' this
theorist and ecumenical intellectual par excellence remained rather alexrf from
philosophy. Nonetheless, any theoretical work in sociology today that failed
to take account erf Talcott Parsons could not be taken seriously.
But we also face a danger about this man, one who became "a classic
even during his lifetime." I refer to the danger of a premature judgment,
one that rejects Parsons before even coming to know his work, to say noth-
ing erf comprehending it. Interest in Parsons's theory has declined since the
middle 1960s, both in the United States and in our country. His more
anthropologically oriented later writings have been pushed to the sidelines
erf prerfessional effort due to an interest in phenomenological, ethnomethodev-
logical, and critical approaches to research and theory building. Only four
years ago the impressive twe)-volume Parsons Festschrift appeared (Loubser
et al, 1976). But already at that time the inner circle of students who had
accompanied the master to his speculations abenit the foundations of the
human condition had shrunk to a sect. Merre recently we witness a return
of very serious interest in his work. Let us he)pe that this is more than just
a reaction to his death.
If I understand the intentions of those who planned this cemvention
correctly, the plenary sessions are to serve eme main purpose: to work
against a widespread weariness with theory, to turn around jaded minds by
rekindling interest in questions about the theory of society. That is why I
should like to address one pre)blem in Parsons's theory, and one that displays
well the inner dynamics oi his theewetical development over time. That pr<^
lem is the paradigm-tension between actiem theory and system theory in his
work. The most important problem erf theory ce>nstruction for Parsons was
the further development erf action thee>ry towards a conceptual system
modeled on a thee>ry erf boundary-maintaining systems. He had already
devel(^d a ccmceptual scheme for the description of e)bject-oriented social
action befe'e he encountered the cybernetic mexiel in the later 1940s, a
model which invited a reformulation of social science functionalism. In
contrast to many system theorists of the younger generatimi, Parsems could
never fall prey to tiie seduction of simply confusing the entities that consti-
tute "action" or "society" with the application erf the system mcxlel to these
TALCOTT PARSONS: PROBLEMS OF THEORY CONSTRUCTION 175
entities. Interesting, indeed, is the tension that remains between the two
paradigms to the later writing (Menzies, 1976). The more errthodea erf his
students simply deny the existence of a tension. The less orthodox seek to
resolve it, either in "a forward direction," as it were, toward the development
of an independent system functionalism, or "backward" by a recoupling erf
the theory to petitions of neevKantianism (Alexander, forthcenning). To
begin with, permit me to explain why I regard this tensiem between the two
paradigms as highly instructive.
Parsons's basic question is the classic eme: How is sexiety as an
ordered set of related actions pe)ssible at all? The answer must be fenmd
through coming to understand the problem erf the coordination erf actiems.
What kind of mechanisms relate alter's actions to the>se of ego in such a
manner that conflicts that might threaten the relatedness of their actions are
either avoided or at least sufficiently cemtrolled to maintain that relateelness?
In general, we elistinguish two kinds of such mechanisms erf integratiem. One
kind, the mechanisms of social integratiem, are based on action orientations;
another, the mechanisms erf system integration, operate with orientations to
action but achieve their effects through the consequences of actiem. In the
former case, action is integrated through conscienis mutuality in the actiem
orientations of the parties concerned. In the latter case, action is integrated
threnigh a fimctional coupling of the consequences erf action to each e>ther,
consequences that may remain latent or beyemd the conscious horizon of
the actiem orientations of the acte^rs involved. In short, Parsems postulates
two kineis of integrative mechanisms. Sexial integration results from norma-
tive consensus among the participants. System integratiem is based on the
non-normative regulatiem erf the action prexess that serves system mainte-
nance. The orientatiem of the acting subject to values and norms is cemsti-
tutive of the social-integrative production of order but not erf its system-
integrative aspect.
The "invisible hand of the market" could serve as a mexld erf system
integration. It was an anemymous mechanism prexiucing order. Our knowl-
edge erf this integrative mechanism dates from the 18th century when pe^tical
economists made "the econemiy," an entity that had differentiated out ol
the larger political order, the e>bject of scientific scrutiny. Since that time
we face a pre)blem imknown to natural law philee^hy and its doctrines.
How are the two mechanisms erf the integratiem erf action related to each
other? What is the relatiemship between sex;ial integration, based as that is
cm the cemsciousness erf acte>rs who share a commem "life-world" {Lebens-
welt), and system integration, that other kind erf mechanism, denng its we^rk
silently, e>ver and above the conscieMis orientatiem erf the actors inverfved? In
his phile)se)phy of law Hegel gave us one answer, eme that pexited an idealist
transformation of subjective to objective spirit Marx with his value theory
erf labor gave us ane>dter answer, one that tried to cemnee^t the anemymenis
self-regulating mechanisms of a market yielded by ecemomic analysis with
the results erf a historical sode^ogy dealing with "life-world" structured
17( QUESTIONS ABOUT ACTION THEORY
(b) Let me turn now to the pre>blem of order. Parsems answered the
questiem how sexiety is pe>ssiUe at all with reference to the normative regu-
lation erf interpersonal relations. Such normative integration demands
reverence fen: ttiat men'al authority upcm which the binding character erf
collectively shared norms for action rests. Critical here remained Durkheim's
distinction between external, causal, and internal, moral constraint. As le-
gards the actor, he has made that constraint so much a part e>f his per-
semality that it no longer amfremts him as an external feyrce but guides him
through his motives. Parsons endeavored to recast Kant's idea ci freedemi
as ohcditDce to self-impe)sed laws in sexiedogical format. CMtical in that
formulation are the symmetrical relatiems between the authority oS acknowl-
edged norms that confront the actor and the self-directiem anchored in his
personality, or the correspondence between the institutiemalizatiem and the
intemallzatiem of values. This femnulatiem reveals the two-sided character
of the idea ot freedemi, a hetdom. ccmstituted in the persand acknowledge-
ment of commitment to impersonal laws.
What Durkheim designated as the matal authenity erf an enxler, Max
Weber refened to as its legitimacy. But legitimate orders not emly r^re-
sent vahies; they also int^rate values with positioa-related interests. Paisons
TALCOTT PARSONS: PROBLEMS OF THEORY CONSTRUCTION 179
This way of approaching the problem contrasts sharply with the concept
of vahies as already intersubjectively shared culture. And it is the contrast
between the two approaches that produces our problem for theory construc-
tion here. How can Parsons connect his monadic unit act with the concept
erf shared and intersubjectively understoexl culture, which he borrowed from
Durkheim? Had Parsons put ihost interpretation efforts of his two inter-
acting actors that make the construction of consensus possible at the core
of his concept of serial action, the pre)blem may well have lent itself to an
adequate solution. After all, language-contingent prex:esses of arriving at
some understanding do requireand with the force of conceptual necessity
some intersubjectively shared traditions, above all else conmionly shared
value-commitments. The context to which any text pewnts can then serve
in the mexiel as the that that creates ordet. The problem of order that
results from the postulate of a denibly contingent relation between two actors
both of whom are capable of decision making [with respect to selecting goals
and means (translator)] could then be solved in this model via orientations
to the bindingness of norms that in turn are designed in terms of intersub-
jective validity.
Yes/no responses to the imposition of nemnative claims on actors do
not originate from some contingent freedom e>f choice. They have their
origin in the moral-practical convictions e>f the actors involved. At least
implicitly, such responses are based on the compelling power of sound
reason [having gexxl reasems to agree or elisagree (translator)]. However,
if one first treats action-oriented decisions as an emergent of the private
arbitrariness of isolated actors, as Parsons did, then one deprives oneself of
a mechanism that cenild explain the emergence ot a system of action out of
unit acts.' It is this embarrassment that sheds some light on the rearrange-
ments of action theory, as evident in the two 1951 publications. The Social
System, and Toward a General Theory of Action.
(2) During this time, the early middle perie>d e>f his work. Parsons no
longer confined himself to conceiving erf the unit act in terms of cemcepts
describing the orientations of a s i n ^ actor in his situation. Instead, he
attempted to treat the concept action ementation as a joint interactive prod-
uct of culture, society, and personality (Parsons, 195la:3-23; 1951b:
53-109). He prex;eeded to analyze the concept action orientation fremi a
perspective that asked what these three could contribute to the pre>duction
of a concrete actiem. As a result, the acten' becomes an agency, an agency
propelled by me>tivational forces and controlled by values at the same time.
The personality system participates in actiem orientations bringing to bear
the forice of me>tives; the se>cial system participates in action orientatiems
bringing into play normative orientatiems.
In the interim Parsons had been influenced by Freud's theory of per-
sonality and Malinowski's cultural anthre^logy. These also altered his
theoretical perspectives. Under their influence Parsons began to construct
his theory with the concept culture. Patterns of value-orientations now
TALCOTT PARSONS: PROBLEMS OF THEORY CONSTTRUCTION 181
became that part of culture of direct relevance for the constituents of action
systems. These value patterns make up the raw material. InsUtutionalization
transforms this material into legitimate role expectations, and intemalization
transforms it into personal motives or character-formed dispositions to act.
In this fashion Parsons conceptualized the two action systems [personality
and society (translator)] as mutually complementary channels through which
cultural values become transformed into motivated action.
This procedure alone raises an interesting question: How can one Iitik
up these three concepts of orderculture, social, and personality system
with the concept action, a concept from which in turn these three could not
be developed? It is important to realize that the three orders culture, society,
and personality were first introduced simply as "systems" in a quite unspe-
cific sense of that term. Without that realization one catmot adequately
grasp the problem for theory construction inherent in the question just
raised. Parsons's work under consideration here is still one where he stuck
to the notion that the action frame of reference made it possible to view
society as a whole as made up of ordered sets of related tinit acts.
Thus, permit me once again to use the concept "action oriented to a
mutual understanding" as a contrast to the unit act. We can use here a
concept current in phenomenological and hermeneutic schoc^s of thought.
I refer to the conceptualization of society as a "life-world" (Lebenswelt) /
We can use this concept in complementary fashion to another, namely ihe
concept oi communicative action. Proceeding along this path, we can come
to conceive of culture, society, and personality as resources for action-
coordinated processes that produce understandings. After all, the certainties
of the "life-world" do not have only the status of taken-for-granted context
presuppositions. The competence of societalized individuals and the sdi-
darity of groups integrated by values and norms constitute that very context
of the "life-world" in a fashion quite similar to received cultural traditions
that one knows without noticing that one knows them. The concept "life-
world" has two strategically important advantages. On the one hand, it is
a promising tocA to answer the question oi the determinants of action oriea-
tations. If we analyze the formal properties of the accomplishments of inter-
pretation on the part of actors who orient their actiotis toward each other by
means of communicative action, it should be possible to show how ctilturid
traditions, institutional orders, and the competencies c^ personalities bring
about commtmicative integration and stabilization of action systems in the
form of diffuse taken-for-granted understandings of their "life-world." On
the other hand, the notion that the symbolic structures of the "life-worldf'
are only reproduced through communicative action is also a useful totd. It
can serve us as a guide for a probably fniitftil analysis of the relations fre-
tween culture, society, and personality. If we find out just how the same
mechanism of accomplishing understandings is used in different ways in the
reproduction of culture, in social integration, and in socialization, the nature
of the interdependencies between the three components of the "life-world"
should become clear to us.
182 QUESTIONS ABOUT ACnON THEORY
^^ Culture^^
Environment Environment
This picture reveals a weakness of the scheme. The schema suffers from a
fusion of basic concepts, and one that lacks clarity. The concepts come from
different paradigms. The cultural system occupies the space, as it were, of
a missing concept. The missing one is the concept of "life-world." And
because culture serves as a substitute here, it has to have this dubious posi-
tion of an entity supraordirtate to the action system but at the same time
also composing its internal environment, one that ncMietheless lacks aU the
empirical character of the environment of a system. How is one to ascribe
to culture actual efficacy in its impact on acticm systems when such culture
transcends in certain ways those very action systems without serving as their
environment? Parsons's intention is quite clear. The identity of a given
action system is supposed to be tied to the value sphere via the Iatter's own
organization, and in such a manner that the system can resist the pressures
to adapt to an overly complex environment through its own imperatives.
Culture should be manifest in making demands that call for obedience to
standards other than the criteria of successful adaptation to the system's
environment. "A cultural system does not 'function,' except as part of a
concrete action system, it just is" (Parsons, 19Sla:17). But what internal
barriers against some change in values, a value change indttced by changp
in system-environment relations, could Parsons identify?
Presumably, the pattern variables simply serve dassificatory purposes.
They enable us to conceive of cultures as variant ccnnbinations of a finite
number of decision patterns. Presumably, the pattern variables do not
describe a structure that restricts change ol such decision patterns in terau
of a developmental logic. If both my presumptions are correct, then Parsons
lacks the theoretical tools to explain the resistance of distinctive or uniqdc
culture patterns to functional imperatives. Parsons has no equivalent for the
IK QinssmoNS ABOUT ACTION THEORY
concept "life-world," which provides the contextual background for commu-
nicative action. If it were otherwise, the sphere of the integrity demands that
Parsons located in a transcendence oi free-floating cultural contents would
have been treated, from the onset, in terms of empirical, time and space-
bound, and identifiable relations between unit acts.
Only with the just indicated alternative strategy for ccmcept formation
could one avoid the paradigm confusion that the second version of Parsons's
theory, one developed during the early 1950s, falls prey to. A "life-world"
with its material substructure is exposed to chance vadaticms in its condi-
tions. From its perspective, though, such chance variations appear more as
barriers to the realization of action projects than as restrictions on its self-
steering capacity. The substructure has to be maintained with the use of
scarce resources through socially organized work. This is the task for which
Parsons chose the catchword allocation problems. Insofar as the net effects
of collective action satisfy the imperative (^ maintaining the material sub-
structure, we have a situation that permits the functional stabilization of
action rdations. It is a functional stabilization by virtue ot feedback con-
cerning the consequences erf action. That is what Parscms meant by "func-
tional" in contrast to "social" integration.
This is a consideration we can still afford to make within the paradigm
ot the "life-world." But it also suggests an alteration of the perspective in
which that paradigm has been used. We should regard the "life-world" as
an objectivating system. With respect to material reproducticm, the processes
ol exchange between life-world and its environment are alone critical, not
the symbc^c structures of the life-world itself. The maintenance (tf the mate-
rial substructure depends entirely on the former. Looking at these in analogy
to "metabolic i'ocesses" (Marx), it seems advisable to reify the life-world
as a boundary-maintaining system. Then functional relations become rele-
vant for its treatment, a matter for which intuitive knowledge about life-
world contexts is not an adequate substitute. The imperatives of survival
reqiiire a functional integration <A the life-world. That kind of integraticm
operates across the symbdic structure of the life-world and that is why it
cannot be comprehended frcnn the perspective of a participant. Compre-
hending that integration requires a contra-intuitive analysis and is to be done
from the perspective ol an observer who objectifies the life-world. Social
integration is a part oi the symbolic reproducticm (^ the lif&-world, involving
not only the reproduction of memberships and sdidarities, but also that of
cultural traditions and socialization process. Let us concq>tualize functicxial
integraticMi, in contrast, as referring to the material rej^oduction of the life-
worid, and treat it as system maintenance.
Study df each of these problems calls for the adopticm of distinctive
methodolopcal orientations and the use of different ccmcepts. One cannot
study functional integration frcnn the internal perspective cl the life-wcwld.
Functional integration beccMnes accessible to the eyes of an observer only
when the life-wcHid has been reified and only when he takes an objectivat-
TALCOTT PARSONS: PROBLEMS OF THEORY CONSTRUCTION 1V7
ing stance toward it as a boundary-maintaining system. l a this procedure
the system model does not just serve as a conventional tod. The latent
functions of action require analysis with a concept of system integration that
transcends the integration of action orientations attributable to communi-
cative action.
The basis of Parsons's action theory is too narrow to develop the
required concept, which has to link up system and life-world in a two-step
methoddogical procedure. The perspective of action theory does not allow
one to develop the required concept of society. That is why ParscMis pro-
ceeded to represent the relations between acticms directly as systems without
realizing the change in perspective which produces the concept action system
through the methodological reification of the life-world in the first place.
Parsons did proceed from the primacy of action theory. But he did not
follow through its implications consistently enough. That is why the metho-
dological significance of the basic system-theoretical concepts retnained
hidden.
Parsons removed the difficulties arising from his dualist conception by
simply removing the special status of culture; and that gave primacy ot place
to the basic ccmcepts of system theory. This remains also the only occasion
where he admitted a revision important for the overall design of his theory.
Hitherto he had reserved for culture a sort of extramundane position as a
sphere of values and legitimacy standards. But then he placed culture cm
the same level of empirical action systems where society and personality had
come to rest. And these three systems, supplemented by a fourth, the
organism or behavioral system, are set subordinate to a general action system
only now gaining postulation in its own right. The general action system is
the reification of the action frame c^ reference.
But this procedure did not, <^ course, permit assimilating the relation
between actw and action situation to that of acticm system and environment;
an action system does not act, it functions. The relations between the already
analyzed components of action orientations are constitutive of the action
system. An action system consists of the relations between values, n(ms,
goals, and resources. Luhmann (1980:8) made the point when asserting:
"Action is a system by virtue of its internal analytical structure." The pro-
cedure also determines the four system references. The action system is
composed of subsystems specialized for the production and maintenance of
one of the compcments of action: culture for values, society tot nonns, per-
sonality for goals, and behaviwal system for means or resources. Actors as
acting subjects disappear in this conceptualization. The actors are now
abstract units, units to which one ascribes dedsimis and the effects of action.
However put, actors stand for aspects of an organism capable of learning,
of the motivaticMial econcMny of personality, erf roles and memberships in
social systems, and of the acticm determining cultural traditicMis.
(4) If my first thesis, the one I developed here at some length, is
correct, thm it is not possible to understand how Parsons himself and his
18S QUESTIONS ABOUT ACTION THEORY
orthcxlox students can deny a change from action to system theory and assert
an unbroken continuity in theoretical development and the history of the
opus. My second thesis asserts that the appearance of such continuity which
effectively hides the change is attributable to a very characteristic reservation
under which Parsons developed his system theory of society. The four-
function schema, a model for inter-system exchanges, the theory of the media
of interchange, and the move toward the anthropolo^cal level of system
formation (Human Condition), all this is evidence of one line of theory
building in the form of system construction conducted with utter consistency
since the Working Papers (Parsons, 1953), and so over the course of a
quarter century. But this ccmstruction of a theoretical system is synchronized
with a reinterpretation and assimilation of action theory on the one side, and
the ever more abstract and consequently ever more hidden preservation of
neo-Kantian intentions on the other. Within the constraints c^ a system
paradigm Parsons still could not let go of a conception of action systems as
incorporations of cultural value patterns, a ccmception he had learned from
the history of social theory. My second thesis requires technical evidence in
its own right, of course. But I shall have to confine myself to four examples
(a-<l); and these are examples on the basis of which one could prove that
action theory has been fundamentally reinterpreted.
(a) As already shown, during his early middle period Parsons described
the functions of action systems with reference to two sets of imperatives.
One concerned the relations between system and environment; the other the
relations to culture. The tasks of functional integration were analyzed in
terms <rf allocation problems. They involve the provisioning, the mobiliza-
tion, and the goal-effective application c^ resources. On the other hand, the
tasks of "social integration" invcdve the maintenance of the structure of value
patterns. While the former covers the material reproduction of the life-
world, the latter covers the reproduction of its symbolic structures. In light
of the history of theory this was a plausible two-fold classification of basic
problems. But the four-function view, the famous AGIL-schema took its
place from 1953 on (Parsons, 1953). The allocative functions were dif-
ferentiated into those of adaptation and those of goal-attainment, while the
new pattern-maintenance function covered both cultural reproduction and
socialization. What is of primary interest in our present context, however,
is the simultaneously accomplished reduction of what was before a critically
important distinction, the distinction between functional and social integra-
tion. Both simply become the new "integrative functicm." And this covered
up the stitch-line that connected the action and system paradigms in his work.
(b) Until 1953 it was quite sufficient for Parsons to illustrate the basic
functions with the model of a functionally differentiated societal system. The
economy served the function of adaptation; the polity the function of goal-
attainment; the legally organized community served the integration funcdcm;
and the cultural subsystem served the culture-transmissicm and socialization
functicms. But this proved no longer sufficient once the AOIL-schema was
TALCOTT PARSONS: PROBLEMS OF THEORY CONSTRUCnON 189
higih level of interpretation and its attendant risks of dissensus with very
limited rcxnn for maneuvering. Money is not a specialized language; it is
instead a cost-saving substitute for special fimctions of language, one that
makes action orientations independent of a life-world context of shared
cultural knowledge, norms acknowledged as binding, and accessible motives.
This uncoupling requires a recoupling of the medium to the life-world. Thus
the circulation of mcmey requires the institutions of civil law, like the law
of property and contract. With certain reservations one can also conceive
of power as a medium. And so conceived, one may view it as playing a role
in the pditical system which is analogous to the rde of money in the eco-
nomic one. However, as soon as Parsons yielded to his compulsi(i for
theory construction here and proceeded to invent other media, such as
influence for the integrative and commitments for the cultural subsystems, he
"had to liquidate," as it were, the very core of his action-theoretical legacy
for the sake of system theory (Habermas, 1980). From the perspective of
action theory, the influence c^ an expert and the binding power of a moral
authority are nonmanipulable goods which can function only as long as one
refrains from subjecting them to strate^c uses. As scx>n as one redefines
them as media, however, they become objects of an objectivating orienta-
tion; and then they have to be treated just like some deposit of money or
power. The concept medium "levels" a distinction between mechanisms
that is critical in action-theoretical perspective. The distinction distinguishes
mechanisms that substitute for consensus accomplished with language and
neutralize the life-world context on the one hand, from those forms of gen-
eralized communication, on the other, that specialize and simplify consensus
formation with respect to truth or correctness criteria but otherwise still rely
cm life-world contexts.
(e) The last example refers to the assimilation of the concept "legiti-
mating force of cultural values" to the control function of the ought-functions
in self-steering systems. This example can also serve as a first illustration of
tendencies in Parsons's work that counteract the liquidation of action-
theoretical traces in the later writings. Even here ParscMis tries to save the
substance of the neo-Kantian dualism of values and factidty, of values and
interests. The differential between the sphere of values and norms to which
one appeals and the realm of the factual conditions of life became signifi-
cantly reduced when culture was degraded to cme sub-system next to others.
Pars(H)s translated the logical tension between the "is" and the "ought" into
a cybernetic analogy in order to minimize this consequence. He equated
cultural values with the critical values (d some guidance mechanism; and he
proceeded to treat the organic bases of action systems as a source of energy.
And then he imposed a hierarchy of organization on the behavicH'al system,
personality, scxnety, and culture in such a way that the lower oat is always
superior in energy to the higher one, while any higher cme is always the
supedcH' in information and steering capacity to the lower. This linear ar-
rangement ot the four subsystems in form of a contrcd hierarchy preserves
TALCOTT PARSONS: PROBLEMS OF THEORY CONSTRUCTION 191
must also note that his work lacks an action-theoretically derived concept
of sexiiety. And that is why Parsons cannot describe the rationalization of
the life-world, on the one hand, and the growth of complexity erf action
systems, on the other, as separatethough of course interacting^but fre-
quentiy also confiicting prewesses. With respect to modem sexiiety. Parsons
can link up new levels erf system eiifferentiation and their corresponding
growth in system autonomy with self-understaneling of modem culture. But
he can do so only by means of catchwords like secularization, institu-
tionalized individu^ism, instrumental activism, and the like. Thus he can
interpret continuing system development in line with Weber's ideas as the
enhanced institutionalization of value, norm, and means-end rational action
orientations.'
Parsons elid not resolve the paradigm cemipetition in his work through
development erf a two-step concept of society, one which could relate life-
world and system to each erther. All he did was to tone down the compe-
tition by fusing the conflicting meanings of the two sets of basic concepts.
And this compromise prevented his full comprehension of a fundamental
alteration that characterizes modem societies. The symbolic structures erf the
mexiem life-world are certainly highly rationalized. But the life-world
remains as dependent on social integration as it always was. Yet the life-
world has not only been separated from the economic and pditical sub-
systems, eiifferentiated out via media as they are, the life-world has also
been subordinated to the imperatives of these subsystems. Basing his obser-
vation on the emerging industrial proletariat, Marx showed us what hides
behind the categories wage labor and monetized labor power. It means no
less than a profound transformation erf a hitherto sex:ially integrated life-
world and its subjugation to the imperatives erf a legally and formally or-
ganized ecemomic system steered witii a medium of exchange values. And
that system can stabilize itself through functiemal interrelations, and, with a
hidden hand and in silence, steer itself right through all actiem euientations.
Texlay, the operation erf the media erf money and organizational power e)r
administrative decision provides us with further realms erf action that have
attained a systemic life of their own. And they also absorb and deform those
realms of life that depend for their very existence em the integratiem ot values
and norms through the cemimunicative accemiplishment erf understandings,
and remain therefore forms of life that canne>t be retooled tor system inte-
gration without pathole)gical side effects.
The theenies of Durkheim and Weber were still sensitive to the kinds
of pathedogies that Marx had analyzed with his paradigmatic case (rf
alienated labor. But Parsexis cemceived erf the rationalization erf the life-
world and the growth erf system complexity in the same basic conceptual
terms to such an extent that he tiiily could not discem the dialectic (rf the
costs of modernization, costs that arise from the growth of system complexity,
for the intemal structure of the life-world. At best he could cope with sudi
ceMts in terms erf certain malfunctiems, like patterns erf monetaiy inflation
194 QUESTIONS ABOUT ACTION THEORY
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