Talcott Parso's Critique of Marx Concept of Alienation.

Talcott Parsons's Analytical Critique of Marxism's Concept of Alienation
Author(s): David Sciulli

Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Nov., 1984), pp. 514-540
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Talcott Parsons's Analytical Critique of
Marxism's Concept of Alienation'
David Sciulli
American University
Parsons's approach to the problem of alienation is compared with

the Marxian use of the concept, as illustrated by C. B. Macpher-
son's critique of power in liberal-democratic societies. Macpherson
shows that disalienation is possible in Marxist theory only if mate-
rial abundance or undifferentiated access to the means of produc-
tion is provided. In contrast, Parsons's approach to the study of
modern society emphasizes that differentiated responsibility and
authority for production and organization are irreversible and in-
creasing. Because of this systemic trend toward functional differ-
entiation, a single normative standard for recognizing either neces-
sity or abundance in absolute terms cannot be assumed. Parsons's
analytical approach to the economic subsystem of the social system
also moves him to reject economists' notions of consumer sover-
eignty and utility. Thus, his schema dismisses as anachronisms both
the "absolutism" of the theory of alienation and the "counter-
absolutism" of the model of the free market.
More than a decade ago Alvin Gouldner noted that "Parsons has, in
effect, generalized alienation, transforming it from an historical condition
to the universal fate of men" (1971, p. 193; cf. Mandel 1971, pp. 63-66).
Gouldner went on to argue that Parsons's analytical framework of con-
cepts presupposed the "background assumption" that mankind is con-
strained by "a nonrational morality" that, for Parsons, cannot be replaced
l I have been influenced by a great many scholars with quite different approaches to
the enterprise of social theory; therefore, those mentioned below would all raise impor-
tant counterarguments to points in my article. I would like to thank Franklin Adler,
Robert J. Antonio, Victor Ayoub, Douglas A. Chalmers, Harvey Goldman, David
Hemmendinger, Ira Katznelson, Mark Kesselman, and Paul Piccone for their instruc-
tion, suggestions, and patience. Most recently, in Washington, D.C., I have benefited
greatly from discussions and exchanges with Dean R. Gerstein, George Ritzer, Ruth
A. Wallace, and, again, Antonio and Piccone. Finally, I must thank the anonymous
reviewers of the AJS for truly excellent criticisms and suggestions. Requests for re-
prints should be sent to David Sciulli, School of Government and Public Administra-
tion, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.
20016.
( 1984 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0002-9602/85/9003-0002$01.50
514 AJS Volume 90 Number 3
Parsons and Alienation
by conscious, collective action directed to emancipation or disalienation.

However, Gouldner failed to elaborate on his argument by showing that
the same analytical framework also led Parsons to ridicule economists'
concepts of consumer sovereignty and utility and to dismiss the possibility
of conscious, collective action directed to reinstituting a free market econ-
omy. In 1977, using the categories he had developed earlier, Parsons
explicitly rejected what he saw as Marxism's "absolutism" of the critique
of alienation and economists' "counter-absolutism" of the ideal of a free
market (1978, pp. 16-22).
Harold Bershady (1973) has since taken Gouldner to task for reading
conservatism and/or normative determinism into Parsons's analytical ap-
proach to sociology. But Bershady and Gouldner, along with Richard
Munch (1981), agree that it is difficult to evaluate specific points in Par-
sons's contribution to sociological theory because his analytical concepts
are so complex and interrelated. A study of his views on, say, economic
activity or political power cannot be divorced from his framework of
concepts that address the entire dynamic between the expansion of
rationalization into all areas of life and the nonrational norms and values
that restrain that expansion or direct how it is accommodated by changes
in systemic functions and structures.
However, in this essay I suspend the question whether Parsons is ulti-
mately a normative determinist, or a consensus theorist, and focus exclu-
sively on his analytical approach to the question of alienation. Using as an
illustration the Canadian Marxist C. B. Macpherson's critique of alien-
ation in liberal-democratic societies, I show how Parsons came to gen-
eralize the concept of alienation and to dismiss the concept of con-
sumer sovereignty. I show that the questions that Parsons's analytical
framework poses to theorists who insist on treating alienation as a histor-
ical, removable phenomenon even in advanced industrial societies are the
same questions that it poses to theorists who insist on treating demand in
the marketplace as emanating from sovereign consumers. In both in-
stances, Parsons focused on systemic changes in modern social systems
that he insisted are irreversible, regardless of the normative orientations
of either capitalist or socialist societies. I will begin with schematic re-
marks on Parsons's analytical approach to the study of society and to
economics.
PARSONS'S ECONOMIC SUBSYSTEM AND HIS

ANALYTICAL APPROACH
The economic subsystem is defined by Parsons by its analytical func-

tion-the adaptive function-within the larger social system, and not in
terms of empirical tasks performed by any empirical organization or "col-
515
American Journal of Sociology
lectivity" (e.g., a firm) producing goods and services (Parsons and Smelser
[1956] 1969, pp. 14-16, 27; Parsons 1958, pp. 206-7). The economic
subsystem's specialized contribution, for Parsons, is the resolution of
problems in the adaptation of the social system as a whole vis-a-vis its
"environment," also analytically defined. The latter includes what Par-
sons terms the cultural system, the personality system, and the physical
environment. Defined in purely analytical terms, without reference to any
particular goals, the economic subsystem specializes in maximizing the
production of utilities (Parsons's term is "facilities") which can be used as
a means to satisfy the generalizable demands of society ("want satisfac-
tion"), as opposed to the demands of any individuals or collectivities.
Parsons sees his analytical framework of concepts as a universal
"code"-a generalizable framework-in terms of which any mutual
understanding of empirical social action by social scientists must, explic-
itly or implicitly, be made. His four subsystems of the social system-the
economy, the polity, the societal community, and the fiduciary-form a
schema of analytical concepts intended by Parsons to be universally ap-
plicable to any empirical society because the concepts are, in his view,
"real." For him, they are the unavoidable, a priori building blocks of all
empirically based ideal types or concepts; these building blocks, however,
are analytical and can never be applied directly as empirical categories.
He characterizes his approach to social theory as "analytical realism,"
as opposed to the quest of positivists for empirical realism or a copy
theory of truth ([1937] 1968, pp. 730-31, 753, 757; [1970a] 1977, p. 27;
1962, p. 62).2 His concepts are, first, analytical in that they are neither
descriptions of empirical phenomena nor empirically based ideal types.
The latter fix analytical concepts into a particular interrelationship that
marks an idealized or intentionally unambiguous standard against which
empirical social action can be evaluated. Max Weber's ideal type of bu-
reaucracy is the classic example.
Second, Parsons's concepts are generalizable in that they are not
confined to-or, therefore, relative to-any particular ideal type or set of
ideal types. Again, for Parsons, they are a priori elements or aspects
constituting any possible ideal types that help us understand social action.
Third, Parsons's concepts are real in that they are not seen by him as
2 Parsons's analytical realism has always distanced him from both a copy theory o
truth and neopositivism's unified-science ideal. However, Parsons did not necessarily
recognize what his distinctive approach implied for the ideal of "science" in sociology,
as his (1974a) exchange with Bershady (1974) makes clear. In addition, there are many
similarities and complementarities between Jiirgen Habermas's (1972, 1973a) and
Karl-Otto Apel's (1980) critiques of neopositivism and Parsons's analytical realism that
have yet to be explored in the secondary literature.
516
"useful fictions"-as Weber characterized his ideal types. Rather, Par-

sons sees his analytical concepts as a priori, as necessarily employed
whenever observers or reflective participants seek to understand social or
collective action as such. To conceive of social action methodically at all
is, he insists, to think with and through his analytical concepts.
The economic subsystem for Parsons is dedicated analytically to pro-
duction, to "capitalization" as such. Other subsystems of the social system
are dedicated analytically to determining goals, or to determining which
societal "wants" are to be satisfied. Want satisfaction, then, is determined
by societal or functional units, and, for Parsons, the consumer function is
analytically outside the economic subsystem because it is normative or
nonrational (literally, not formally rational). Only the producer function,
directed by the norm of formal rationality in the selection of efficient
means or instruments, is inside the economic subsystem (Parsons and
Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 2 1-25).
For Parsons, the economic subsystem, functioning to produce in-
strumentalities efficiently, is the subsystem of formal extraction. In com-
parison, the political subsystem is dedicated to the societal subsystem's
function of goal attainment (not goal selection) and the effective control of
personnel. It is the subsystem of formal organization: "The idea of agency
. . .is the core of the concept of the 'political aspect' . . ." (Parsons 1969,
p. 476). Both the economic and political subsystems, being formal means,
are analytically abstracted from any substance or policy content.
The polity, then, is dedicated analytically to effective attainment of
empirical goals (never ultimate or transcendental ends) within an already
given normative or nonrational pattern. Other analytical subsystems
maintain societal direction to ultimate ends or values (the "fiduciary" or
"pattern-maintenance" subsystem) or determine which societal norms are
to be influential as a specification of those societal values (the "societal
community" or "integrative" subsystem).
As efficient and effective means, respectively, the economic and polit-
ical subsystems constitute for Parsons the analytically defined process of
rationalization. The societal community and fiduciary subsystems, as the
locus of normative influence and value direction, respectively, constitute
for him the analytically defined "nonrational realm." The polity, then,
marks the arena of intersection between the analytically defined rational
and nonrational, and this already indicates that Parsons will not charac-
terize political functions as being as internally consistent with the norm of
formal rationality-what he called "the intrinsic means-end schema"-as
he does economic functions. In Appendix A I explain why I see this
dichotomy in his four-function scheme.
For Parsons, the substantive significance or meaning of both produc-
517
tion and consumption can be evaluated only in terms of each social sys-
tem's institutionalized value system because, given the expansion of
rationalization into all areas of life and the disenchantment and fragmen-
tation of common belief in substantive values that Weber had empha-
sized, there are no longer generalizable substantive values in the modern
world. Parsons's move to analytical groupings and societal functions as
the focal point of his conceptual framework developed out of his critique
of the focal point of utilitarian theory-the rational individual and empir-
ical conditions ([1937] 1968, pp. 64-67, 381-86, 699-708).3
Consumer demand, for Parsons, is always mediated by internalized
and institutionalized norms and is never atomistically and without media-
tion determined by individuals possessing some consumer sovereignty
(Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 20-23; cf. Galbraith 1967, chap.
19). For him the concept of utility, then, can apply only to those facilities
or instrumentalities available for solving the adaptive problems of the
social system. Similarly, for him the concept of wealth can never refer to
an inventory of commodities but can refer only to instrumentalities for
achieving societal goals and for inducing the cooperation of actors (ana-
lytical roles) in achieving those goals. He is quite aware that his analytical
approach to the adaptive function is not consistent with the dominant
empirical categories of economic theory (Parsons and Smelser [1956]
1969, pp. 23, 75).
Given this analytical framework, Parsons will abstract from the con-
tent of Marxism's concept of alienation by acknowledging the results of
alienation but analytically defining the concept as being normative rather
than economic. For Parsons, the Marxian notion of the extraction of
surplus value from individual workers or from workers as a group is not
analytically an economic category but incorporates normative or nonra-
tional aspects, just as the utilitarian notion that production is directed by
consumers' sovereignty is not analytically an economic category but in-
corporates normative aspects ([1965] 1967, pp. 102-8, 113-15, 118-21;
1978a, pp. 16-22).
I The pluralism of beliefs among actors regarding substantive ways of life extends to
social science observers' beliefs regarding theories or categories of substantive ways of
life. Parsons moved to the study of the analytical components of necessary societal
functions in order to develop some generalizable framework of concepts in the face of
actors' and observers' functional differentiation and value pluralism (Bershady brings
this out nicely [1973, chap. 3]). By staying on the analytical level, Parsons escaped
Weber's pessimism regarding the prospects for a specific value consensus in modern
societies by locating systemic and functional directions of change (especially "instru-
mental activism" and "institutionalized individualism") that each modern society, and
each collectivity within any modern society, specifies in various ways.
518
MACPHERSON ON ALIENATION AND POWER
Marx ([1844] 1964; [1846] 1970; [1857-58] 1973; [1861-67] 1970) devel-
oped the concept of alienation, and Lukaics ([1922] 1972) later recon-
structed Marx's argument. Both proceeded by exploring the relationship
between active concrete labor and the way labor is treated, abstracted, in
capitalist society. Concrete labor always includes at least some compo-
nents of genuine praxis, or some nonalienated moments of creative activ-
ity; abstract labor, however, is labor as it is treated and perceived within
capitalist society-as the exchangeable thing "labor power," to be bought
and sold like any other commodity thing. For Marx and Lukacs, capi-
talist society distorts or alienates the most important qualities of concrete
labor-the inherent moments of praxis-by placing unnecessary re-
straints on laborers' access to the means of production, the means neces-
sary to exercise and develop moments of praxis.
Because moments of praxis occur so infrequently in capitalist society
and, when experienced, are manifested in such alien and distorted ways,
those moments appear burdensome rather than self-expressing. In this
way the merely historical reality of unnecessary capitalist relations of
production becomes reified, in the subjective consciousness of partici-
pants, as a necessary or immutable characteristic of concrete labor as
such. The expression of laborers' potential demands (inherent in acts of
concrete labor) to have the moments of praxis increasingly exercised and
developed-to have the unnecessary capitalist restraints on access dis-
mantled-may, therefore, be delayed ("false consciousness") because of
the distortions subjectively experienced in acts of concrete labor. One
such distortion is "commodity fetishism" (Marx [1861-67] 1970, pp. 71-
83), whereby labor-the potential expression of praxis-is seen by labor-
ers as merely another commodity to be bought and sold.
Rather than explore the concept of alienation by means of the catego-
ries provided by Marx and Lukaics-which has been done repeatedly and
expertly by countless commentators (see Appendix B)-I illustrate the
continuing radical implications of their categories for Marxism by follow-
ing C. B. Macpherson's critique of liberal democracy's role in sustaining
alienation. On the one hand, the Macpherson illustration is sufficient for
the purposes of this paper because, as will be shown in the next section,
Parsons rejects the entire Marxian approach to the analysis of labor; for
Parsons, the Marxian categories distort our understanding of what is
functionally immutable in any possible modern society, socialist or capi-
talist. On the other hand, the Macpherson illustration is much more than
merely sufficient: Macpherson's critique of liberal democracy is not
merely a fair, and very sympathetic, account of the Marxian critique of
alienation (and of reification); it is, in my view, one of the strongest cases
519
for the Marxian critique in the literature (cf. Meszaros 1972; Mandel
1971; Ollman 1971, 1977; Heller 1972).
In all of his publications, Macpherson (1962, 1966, 1973a, 1973b) has
stressed that liberal-democratic governments uphold "a dual system of
power." The first and most readily recognized system of power is govern-
ment's institutionalized function of directly governing or controlling its
population, maintaining what Theodore Lowi terms "the institutionaliza-
tion of conquest" (Lowi 1976, pp. 1-12). In liberal-democratic govern-
ments, Macpherson notes, the limits or restraints placed on conquest are
stressed: constitutional and legal forms.
However, the second and, for Macpherson, often overlooked system
of power involves liberal-democratic government's direct or indirect
upholding of a given set of socioeconomic relationships. In liberal-
democratic societies, Macpherson insists, this involves the upholding of
essentially market relationships of super- and subordination.
In "Problems of a Non-market Theory of Democracy" (1973b), Mac-
pherson focuses on the latter system of power and deemphasizes analysis
of constitutional and legal forms. This approach is legitimate because
Macpherson wants to study the relationships of power generated in mar-
ket societies that are often overlooked by liberal-democratic theorists.
However, the approach makes Macpherson's analysis easier since it im-
plies that either (1) liberal-democratic notions of constitutionalism and
legality will be totally replaced by some other, not yet elaborated, alterna-
tives once power relationships of market society are radically changed; or
(2) liberal-democratic theories and institutions can be readily adapted to
new, nonmarket socioeconomic relationships so that arbitrary uses of
governmental power will still be restrained. Marxists have implied either
or both positions, but Marxism has yet to pursue systematically the impli-
cations of either position for political practice or for Marxian theory itself.
In order to demonstrate that coercion or hierarchical power relation-
ships are involved in any complex set of market relationships, Macpher-
son assumes liberal theory's differentiation between two ideal-typical
market models. In the first, "the simple market model," each household
controls enough resources to enable it to produce goods and services
either directly for itself or for exchange. That is, because each household
is autonomous and autarkic, exchange relationships outside the house-
hold are entirely voluntary: each household is completely free not to enter
into any particular exchange, and also completely free not to enter into
exchange relationships at all.
However, in "the complex market model," labor becomes separated
from capital such that households are no longer autonomous and au-
tarkic. Although any particular exchange relationship may still be re-
520
jected or avoided, the freedom not to enter into exchange relationships at

all is no longer available.
Macpherson's point is that one may agree that there is no coercion in
the first model but that Marxism points out that that model distorts our
understanding of market relationships in the modern world. Regarding
the complex market model, Macpherson says that we may agree that the
coercion involved may have been necessary at a particular point in his-
tory but that today such coercion can be acceptable only if we a:ssume that
man is "by nature" an infinite possessor and consumer.
In order to illustrate Marx and Lukacs's critique of modern "free"
market relationships as a locus of increasingly unnecessary coercion,
Macpherson turns to Marxism's alternative definition of man and how it
illuminates the often subtle implications of defining man as an infinite
possessor and consumer (1973b, pp. 40-52; cf. Mandel 1971, p. 161). In
Macpherson's view, Marxism defines man as essentially a creative being,
or a being essentially concerned with "using and developing his
capacities." On this basis, Macpherson coins his own terms to differ-
entiate two types of power in modern market society.
The first is "developmental power," or a man's ability to use and de-
velop his own capacities. Macpherson emphasizes that one component of
a man's developmental power is his access to the means needed to use and
develop his capacities, since without such access the capacities are neither
used nor developed. The second is "extractive power," or the transfer of
some of a man's ability to use his own capacities to another. For Mac-
pherson, the notion of extractive power is not at all based on the subjec-
tive beliefs of the people involved. Extractive power can be said to exist
whenever the transfer is in evidence, regardless of whether that transfer is
the result of coercion or of cooperation, or, if cooperative, whether the
agreement was one-sidedly manipulated or mutually undertaken.
Macpherson need not address the latter possibilities because he is
measuring extractive power against the absolute standard of free, un-
mediated access to the means necessary for the use and development of
capacities. Thus, Macpherson's criterion for a truly democratic society
means that a man's power is to be measured by "the absence of impedi-
ments" to the use of his capacities (1973b, p. 58). Therefore, Macpher-
son's critique of market society always departs from the view that in any
democratic theory proper a man's power must be measured against a
maximum, not-as is the case with economists' focus on the consumption
of utilities-against some previously attained amount.
Given this background, Macpherson illustrates what Marx and Lukacs
mean by alienation or, in Macpherson's terminology, how one person's
ability to extract developmental power from another by the control of
521
access affects the latter's developmental power (1973b, pp. 64-70). First,
there is "a net transfer" of power in that the owner or controller of access
extracts a part of a man's power as payment for his access, and this is
never fully reimbursed by the wage (industry-wide or society-wide) or by
the cost of reproducing capital.
There is a net transfer to the extractor or employer because a poten-
tially (if not actually) infinite capacity-developmental power-is being
exchanged for a specific wage. Regardless of the amount involved, the
wage can never equal the expenditure of developmental power without
undermining the ultimate source of profit. Furthermore, this net trans-
fer-what Marx termed surplus value-is not counterbalanced by social
welfare transfer payments going in the other direction since, again, if the
two kinds of transfers did balance, profit or the incentive to generate
profit would be undermined.
The effect of a single act of net transfer on developmental power, then,
can be located and measured in quantifiable or utilitarian terms because
the extractor receives the benefit as profit margin. But the next two effects
are losses of developmental power that are not received by any other
individual or group in market society. Thus, they are not easily located or
measured, and they have been the focus of neo-Marxism; Macpherson
points out that recognition of them hinges on the observer's philosophical
anthropology or definition of man.
Second, a man's ability to use and develop his capacities is diminished
by the loss of satisfaction derived from consciously controlling his own
developmental power in the laboring process. Neither the laborer nor the
employer benefits from this loss, and, generally, both would prefer that
the situation were different.
Third, a man's ability to use and develop his capacities outside the
laboring process is diminished since a man lacking control in his produc-
tive life is likely to take less conscious responsibility in his other activities
and is not likely to develop the latter as fully as possible. Thus, his
capacities are developed in an "alien" or distorted way.
This latter effect of extractive power on developmental power is what
links Marxism's notion of praxis to Aristotle's use of the term (Macpher-
son 1973b, p. 56). For Aristotle, "leisure" comprised the moments of
"recovery from work"-work being a means toward something else-
and "activity as an end in itself" or praxis. For Aristotle, one must be
thoroughly recovered and rested from work in order rigorously to under-
take praxis; thus, if the former is never realized, the latter can never
occur. For Macpherson, the loss of control in laboring means that devel-
opmental power is expended in work instead of in praxis and, since the
period of recovery from work is too brief, modern man's leisure or extra-
laboring time never moves from recovery to praxis. Instead, praxis is
522
replaced by infinite consumption and production, with moments of recov-

ery from work. The second and third types of diminishment, then, are the
products of a continuous series of acts of net transfer.
For Macpherson, the power of the liberal-democratic state maintains
the extractive power of the owners and controllers of access to the means
to use and develop one's capacities. The state creates and maintains this
institution of private property, but individuals or corporate entities own
the property; just as, Macpherson notes, the state could create and main-
tain the institutions of common property-the rights in common to un-
mediated access and benefit-while individuals would possess them
(1973a, pp. 120-40). Automation and cybernetics present the objective
opportunity for limiting work and creating the free time necessary for
both recovery and praxis, but the accepted notion of man as an infinite
consumer and possessor continually legitimates the expansion of "need"
for consumer goods and thereby legitimates the expansion of extractive
power in the name of "necessity."
PARSONS'S ANALYSIS OF LABOR AND SERVICE
In Parsons's analysis of the economic function, the four factors of produc-

tion are dynamically combined in the economic subsystem so as to yield
either a "good" or a "service" with more utility in securing societal wants
than would be yielded by the mere sum of the factors. Thus, instead of
positing that the empirical labor force is being alienated from developing
its true capacities, Parsons holds that analytically defined "labor" is
merely a raw commitment or motivation that must be converted into
"service" to societal units. Labor, for Parsons, initially lacks power capa-
ble of being alienated; instead, within the economy's combinatorial pro-
cess, labor is converted into analytically defined service and is thereby
elevated by a "value-added" component it initially lacked ([1963b] 1969,
pp. 355-59; 1975, p. 208).4 This is why Parsons categorizes labor as a
'factor input" into the economic subsystem and service as a "product
input" going into the political subsystem. Being the product of the eco-
nomic subsystem's combinatorial process, service possesses usefulness.
Parsons's (and Smelser's) abstraction from the Marxian concept of
4 The combinatorial process is that interrelationship between "factor" inputs within

any analytical subsystem that recapitulates or maintains each subsystem's societal
function by resulting in "products" which have more qualities than the sum of the
factors. The economic subsystem may be used as an example; there the combinatorial
process interrelates the factors of production in order to maintain the subsystem's
immediate orientation to efficient, material adaptation (rather than, say, to spiritual
reflection) even if the subsystem function is then mediated or restrained outside the
subsystem by other norms or orientations.
523
alienation is developed in detail in Economy and Society ([1956] 1969),

but Parsons sharpened his terminology in later publications. For in-
stance, in 1956 Parsons and Smelser referred to labor at various times as
"labor service" or as "human service," and they referred also, in different
contexts, to "entrepreneurial service" ([1956] 1969, pp. 25-26, 53-55).5
Over a decade later, however, in a long footnote to the essay "Polity and
Society: Some General Considerations," Parsons noted that he had to
distinguish increasingly between goods and service, and between labor
and service. I cite that footnote in full and examine it since it is concise
and yet does not depart in substance from the theses of Economy and
Society:
Since we define service as an input of power from the economy to the

polity, and product as an output of the economy, to avoid confusion a
distinction is necessary between service in this sense and labor as a factor of
production, as dealt with in economic theory. The older economic theorists
generally bracketed "goods and services" together as the primary outputs of
the productive process, destined for "consumption." With the theoretical
developments following from Economy and Society, however, it became
increasingly necessary to discriminate them, in the case of goods, as input to
the household (L), and of services, to the polity (G). This theoretical deci-
sion was grounded in the view that all direct functional "contribution" in a
societal system involves collective performance (cf. Social Structure and
Personality, ch. 12), and hence the contribution of persons in roles is di-
rectly to a unit of the polity, and only through it to the society.
Labor as a factor of production, on the other hand, is conceived as the
"real" output (i.e., nonmonetary) of the household to the economy. Essen-
tially it is conceived as a commitment (in the technical sense) of capacity for
instrumental performance to productive function in the economic sense.
However, this commitment of "labor capacity," as we have called it, is not
utilizable; literally it does not possess utility until it has been combined with
the other factors of production. It emerges from this combinatorial process
as a product with utility that can be acquired on the "labor market" by
organizations seeking collective goals. Later on we shall present a typology
of such organizations, of which the firm is one. Unfortunately, current
terminology, including the prevalent usage of economists, does not stress
the analytical distinction between labor and service, which is essential to
the clarification of this complex set of relationships. [1969, p. 479, my
emphasis]
Regarding the distinction between goods and services (Parsons and

Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 11-12), goods are a product of the economic
subsystem (A), received as a product-input by the analytical household or
pattern-maintenance subsystem (L). For Parsons, goods flow only from A
to L and then are either consumed there or distributed to other parts of
I Parsons returned to this question after 1956 and increasingly refined his terminology
over time ([1963b] 1969, pp. 355-59; [1963a] 1969, p. 408; [1966] 1969, p. 326; [1968]
1969, pp. 460-61; Parsons and Platt 1973, pp. 368-69; Parsons [1975] 1977, p. 208).
524
the social system by way of the political subsystem (G). A "product" input
is the product of a combinatorial process within one of the subsystems-
in this case within the economic subsystem-whereas a "factor" input is a
mere precombined raw material. Although both are analytically defined,
products are closer to observable, empirical phenomena than are factors.
In other words, products are like Weberian ideal types whereas factors
are the even more abstract, analytical elements constituting the ideal-
typical combination.
For Parsons, goods are physical objects demanded as socially want
satisfying; they are characterized by quality, independent of performance
(whereas a good that combined quality and performance would be a
slave). In contrast, services are a product of the economic subsystem
which are received as a product-input by the analytical political subsys-
tem. For Parsons, services flow only from A to G and then are either
employed there or distributed to other parts of the social system by the
political subsystem. Services are performances which are socially want
satisfying. For Parsons, the institution of property determines the scope
of acceptable societal goods (i.e., property rights in physical objects as
possessions or consumables), whereas the institution of occupation deter-
mines the scope of acceptable societal services (i.e., commitments of "role
performance" to effective employment). It will be shown shortly how this
distinction relates to Parsons's view that the institution of investment
determines the scope of acceptable capital formation (i.e., authority over
physical objects as facilities rather than as consumables or possessions).
More central to the concerns raised by the concept of alienation, how-
ever, is Parsons's distinction between labor and service (see n. 5 above).
As just noted, service is a product of the economic subsystem's com-
binatorial process and is a product-input to the political subsystem. Each
of the subsystems of the social system contributes a factor of production to
the economic subsystem: (1) What economists term the labor factor is for
Parsons the commitment, of a potentially useful capacity, from the house-
hold (pattern-maintenance) subsystem (L). (2) The capital factor of econo-
mists is for Parsons the allocation of control, over potentially useful fluid
resources, from the political subsystem (G). (3) The organization factor of
economists is for Parsons the ranking, of institutionalized claims or
priorities, from the societal community subsystem (I). (4) The land factor
of economists is for Parsons the economic subsystem's own institutional-
ized societal function, the orientation to productivity or capitalization as
such (A) (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 70-84).
If the product emerging from the economic subsystem's combinatorial
process of all four factors is a physical object, it is a good in Parsons's
sense and goes to the household subsystem. If not consumed there but
used for adaptive purposes within the economic subsystem (i.e., capital),
525
it must first be mediated by the political subsystem, the combinatorial

organizing process.6 However, if the emerging product is a performance,
it is a service in Parsons's sense and must go to the political subsystem. If
not employed there (e.g., in the military or the bureaucracy) but, rather,
to be used for adaptive purposes within the economic subsystem (i.e.,
employment in production), it must again be first mediated by the polit-
ical subsystem. The polity's systemic function is to assume responsibility
for and to have authority over effective performance, or effectiveness in
goal attainment as such, without regard for the particular goal involved.
For Parsons, service is not concerned with the alienation of its power-its
power not being some inalienable, natural right but the social product of
the economic subsystem's combinatorial process. Service is concerned,
however, that its value-added power not be wasted by not being used
effectively by those having the authority and responsibility for organizing
personnel (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 259).
It will provide a context for Parsons's views on service to point out that
there are basically two popularized ways of looking at employment. One
is that the employer steals workers' abilities and that every expenditure of
energy by workers should be compensated so that the inevitable theft is
not too one-sided. The other is that many individuals seek an opportunity
to express their creative powers, and that compensation (above a certain
threshold) increasingly becomes secondary to the rigors of the creative
effort itself.
The divergence may be illustrated as follows. More reflective propo-
nents of market society characterize it as a game in which the systemic
results-infinite consumption and production-are less important than
the numerous openings provided to participants on the individual level
for creative expression (e.g., Hayek 1973-79). Critics of market society,
6 As an example of how Parsons's analytical categories cut across empirical organiza-

tions or collectivities, when the government consumes goods (e.g., office supplies) it is
categorized by Parsons as "acting as part of the pattern-maintenance subsystem" and
not as part of the political subsystem (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 55). Presum-
ably, as government employment of service expands such that the government also
consumes more goods instead of allowing them to be allocated to other societal units,
the government's "household" function expands. This calls to mind Daniel Bell's
(1976, chap. 6) focus on "the public household" as the institution needed to remedy
emerging problems of advanced industrial societies. Bell's argument cannot be exam-
ined here, but the idea of government expanding and formalizing its household func-
tions, or treating "the private spheres" increasingly as a household concern of govern-
ment, seems "realistic" because the expansion of means-ends rationalization need not
be restrained by any substantive norms held in common. Whether there are procedural
or formal norms that are generalizable and could restrain or redirect the accommoda-
tion of this type of rationalization by both government and groups in society is a
possibility that Bell did not explore but one that is implicit in Parsons's work on
legality and collegial formations.
526
however, characterize it as a mindless process of production and con-

sumption wherein those who control production feign gamesmanship
while being driven anxiously by systemic forces increasingly to close off to
those who lack such control the potential openings for creative expression
(e.g., Galbraith 1967).
Parsons assumes that the view of the quest for creative expression
explains more about "the institution of occupation" than the view of
stolen abilities. Moreover, in Parsons's schema the latter view is not really
about the analytical institution of occupation at all but about the analyt-
ical institution of property rights in consumables. To support this posi-
tion, Parsons notes that the latter institution cannot account for that
component of motivation in employment which is not affected by fluctua-
tions in compensation (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 179-80,
260-66; Parsons [1937] 1968, pp. 130-41, 161-64).
In contrast to the economic subsystem's product of service, labor in
Parsons's terminology is a precombined factor.7 As a factor, labor is
equivalent in every respect to the other three factors of production be-
cause none has utility or useful power prior to their combination in the
economic subsystem. For Parsons, the labor commitment is real or not
simply monetary, but it is not utilizable. It cannot make a direct func-
tional contribution to a social system or to any of its subsystems because it
is not yet mediated by the combinatorial process of the economic subsys-
tem or organized by the political subsystem.
Labor for Parsons is a relatively constant, internalized commitment
resulting from socialization in the household subsystem, a commitment
that is not contingent on mere fluctuations in compensation. Rather, it is
grounded in what Alfred Marshall called "the healthy exercise of faculties
[as] the aim of life, [as] life itself" (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 28;
also, pp. 25-26, 41, 50-51, 70). Parsons sees this view of labor being one
implication of Weber's discussion of the Protestant ethic, along with Mar-
shall's discussion of "activities." Such an internalized commitment is non-
rational, not reducible to the norm of formal rationality, and, therefore,
rational (monetary) inducement cannot be expected to affect it substan-
tially (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 24, 28; Parsons [1937] 1968,
pp. 130-41, 513-21). Although this view appears to be similar to the
Marxian notion of labor's inherent power or productivity, in Parsons's
analytical concept labor lacks utility, power, or productivity. Thus, Par-
sons can accommodate a formal definition of surplus value as simply
' In terms of a factor input into the economic subsystem, labor is precombined; but it is
also the product of a combinatorial process within the pattern-maintenance or house-
hold subsystem. I cannot pursue this point here, but it does not affect Parsons's
analysis of labor or service.
527
collective control (by the political subsystem) over access to the economic
subsystem's combinatorial process, but he eliminates, by definition, the
view that a substantive effect of such controlled access is a diminishment
of labor's power. Labor has no inherent power (Parsons and Smelser
[1956] 1969, pp. 54-55).
Since labor is equivalent in its lack of utility or power to the other three
factors of production, any surplus profit in production cannot be charac-
terized as even partially a diminishment of, or extraction from, labor's
power. Furthermore, not only is labor not diminished because of differen-
tial access to the combinatorial process, it is awarded, over and above the
wage or conditions of employment, a "value added" that is generated
within the combinatorial process itself. The factor labor is "elevated" to
the product service, which is utilizable and has power. Since the analyt-
ical labor commitment is not commanded by institutionalized power from
the polity subsystem (but is instead an internalized predisposition con-
stantly emanating from the pattern-maintenance subsystem), and since
this commitment can be accepted on universalistic criteria rather than on
ascriptive criteria-analytical labor commitment does not bear ascrip-
tive characteristics-the political subsystem's control of access to the
combinatorial process is not a diminishment of labor or of any other
factor of production. Instead, this control of access is solely a mechanism
for maximizing the production of the means to societal want satisfaction,
regardless of how the latter is determined. Parsons, to be sure, would not
deny that, empirically, governments may command employment, and
employers may discriminate on the basis of employees' ascriptive charac-
teristics. But Parsons's point is that these phenomena-like alienation
and consumer sovereignty-are not analytically economic concepts but
normative concepts.
Because the economic subsystem's combinatorial process in general,
not labor commitment specifically, is the producer of utilities as goods or
services, the labor commitment in the economic subsystem cannot be
defined by its supposed capacities against an absolute standard of undif-
ferentiated access to the means of production. Parsons terms such a stan-
dard "absolutist." His substitute standard for determining the effective
use of service is whatever is the subjectively accepted standard of induce-
ment for, or access to, service as it emerges from the combinatorial pro-
cess. Therefore, alienation for Parsons is totally relational vis-a-vis the
historical exigencies of inducements and access. Since in a complex soci-
ety there will always be differential authority and responsibility for effec-
tiveness in attaining societal goals, alienation is just as universal as the
subsystem function of instrumental adaptation: "As an output from
households, labor should be regarded as a commitment to implement the
value of economic rationality through contribution to production. Since
528
labor is only one factor of production, a sufficiently differentiated econ-

omy must institutionalize the 'alienation' of labor, for normally one can-
not successfully implement the labor commitment in organizational con-
texts totally controlled by oneself or by those with whom one associates on
a Gemeinschaft basis" ([1968] 1969, p. 460; also [1966] 1969, p. 326; 1978,
pp. 365-66; 1970c, p. 609). For Parsons, the economy is the subsystem of
purely formal extraction which any possible social system must incorpo-
rate, whether a particular empirical society does so through a market
system or otherwise.
Parsons notes that economists tend to look at markets exclusively in
terms of the degree of control over output and process and therefore
establish the poles of free market and monopolistic market and locate
empirical markets somewhere between. He sees his schema of concepts as
demonstrating that market imperfections are also due to differences "in
sociological type" between the institutions concerned with consumables,
occupations, and capital (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 3, 70-84,
143-76). Again, empirical collectivities do not correspond to the analyt-
ical boundaries of these sociological types, even in highly differentiated
societies. Control of capital and authority to make investment decisions
are for Parsons political functions, even if the empirical collectivities
typically involved are "private" banks:
It is important to note that political controls are not coterminous with

governmental in this context. . . . In any given society the locus of im-
mediate control of the creation and manipulation of generalized purchasing
power is problematical. . . . The crucial element of this control, however, is
the element of generalization, i.e., the acceptability of the relevant symbolic
control mechanisms throughout the society. To insure such acceptability
... must be a function of the activity of the society's politically coordinating
sub-system. This sub-system does not directly release specific quantities of
goods and services to the economy for capitalization; rather it is the location
of the mechanisms which enforce "claims" to control these goods and ser-
vices. . . . In other words, the supply of capital funds through credit
creation does not put concrete capital goods into the economy, but puts at
the disposal of economic units the power to command certain quantities of
capital goods. [Parsons and Smelser (1956) 1969, pp. 57-58]
Similarly, for Parsons, durable consumer goods in the empirical house-

hold are, analytically, capital goods; much housework in the empirical
household is, analytically, service; employment in empirical firms is not,
analytically, exclusively economic but involves also pattern-maintenance
functions, as in the role of trade unions; empirical firms' consumption of
"style-of-life symbols" such as landscaping is, analytically, consumer
goods; and self-financing by empirical firms is, analytically, political deci-
sion making (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, pp. 79-81). All of these
analytical distinctions made by Parsons in the mid-1950s have since be-
529
come liberal or even radical slogans, and yet his work is routinely dis-
missed as being that of a consensus theorist.
COMPARING PARSONS'S APPROACH WITH THE

MACPHERSON ILLUSTRATION
By his analytical separation of labor and service, Parsons casts a new

light on the implications of Marxism's definition of the problem of aliena-
tion and disalienation as one that is empirical and historical rather than
analytical and universal. The Marxian position that the power or inher-
ent productivity of labor may one day be fully realized means that aliena-
tion or differential access to the means of production is not viewed as an a
priori component of demand or want satisfaction as such. For Parsons,
the Marxian limiting case of disalienation, like the utilitarian limiting
case of consumer sovereignty, is an ideal type that is the result of an
unsystematic combination of concepts that are not the analytical and
universal components of instrumental adaptation but are instead both
empirical and nonrational. For Parsons, such ideal types are manifestly
anachronistic and their continued use necessarily distorts research results,
even if the latter can claim empirical validity in particular instances
([1949] 1964; [1965] 1967; [1974b] 1978).
Whereas Marxism combines an absolutist notion of labor's power on
the one hand with an absolutist notion of abundance and unmediated
access to the means of production on the other, Parsons stresses the
unavoidability of mediations on both sides. He defines service as produc-
tive or effective activity but defines away the possibility that it can ever
be so in a self-mediating way. By definition, it is already a product of the
combinatorial process of the economic subsystem and, by definition, it is
already organized by the political subsystem. Without these two media-
tions at least, there is merely an unutilizable and ineffective general com-
mitment. Furthermore, the historical expansion of rationalization into
more and more areas of life directs these two mediations toward greater
institutional differentiation and formalization, not toward "dedifferentia-
tion" and self-mediation.
Marxism stressed labor's productivity under the assumption that it
could become an expression of purely self-mediating activity (e.g., 011-
man 1977). Totally unmediated access to the means to use and develop
one's capacities, then, became the Marxian standard of "substantive ra-
tionality," an "objective" (absolutist) standard against which the partial-
ity of capitalist formal rationality could be radically, fundamentally
criticized. However, this absolutist standard must be seen against Max
Weber's focus on the expansion of rationalization whereby any possible
substantive restraint placed on the expansion is necessarily nonrational,
530
not formally rational. Given Weber's work, Marxism cannot conceptually

differentiate capitalist, formal rationality from socialist, substantive ra-
tionality except by positing that the latter is the full extension of the
former: absolute abundance and totally unmediated access.8
Parsons, in criticizing utilitarianism and in "elevating" Weber's con-
cepts to the analytical level, departs from the view that a society based
purely on the formal rationality of "the intrinsic means-end schema" is a
strictly analytical limiting case that can never cohere empirically without
being combined to some degree with nonrational restraints, whether pro-
cedural (constitutional, legal) or substantive (religious). Any conceptual
concern with a future society characterized by "substantive rationality"-
self-mediation, or undifferentiated access to the authority and responsi-
bility for effective organization and efficient production-strikes Parsons
as being both theoretically simplistic and empirically eschatological.
If one notes a few similarities between Parsons's and Marxism's
definitions of concepts, the reason for their divergent appraisals of market
society can be specifically located. Parsons's distinction between service
and goods is very similar to Marxism's distinction between labor and
capital, a distinction based on Marxism's labor theory of value. For Par-
sons, too, "physical goods do not perform services because their utiliza-
tion is not part of a reciprocal interplay on the action level between
actors," even though goods "are the source of a 'flow' of utility" (Parsons
and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 12). Thus, capital, for Parsons as for Marx-
ism, is an instrument that cannot be the source of value. Furthermore, for
Parsons as for Marxism, service (or Marxism's labor) involves a general-
ized commitment to express creative powers (or Marxism's praxis). Fi-
nally, for Parsons as for Marxism, capital represents political authority,
not private (household) property like a possession or a consumable, since
"it is not so much an inventory of commodities as an instrumentality for
achieving goals and inducing the cooperation of actors in that achieve-
ment" (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 24).
However, although Parsons agrees with Marxism that physical goods
"must be given a 'meaning' or 'economic significance"' and that "qualita-
tively different physical units, such as tons and hours, must be rendered
quantitatively comparable" (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 20), he
8 Because Jiirgen Habermas (1972, chaps. 2-3; 1973b, chap. 6; [1981] 1984, chaps. 2-
3) and Albrecht Wellmer (1976) have kept Weber's view of the expansion of rationali-
zation in mind, they have leveled the same criticism at Marx and Marxism: the lack of
categories that permit a differentiation between what rationalization means under
capitalism and what it could mean under socialism. I would go further and say that the
very term "substantive rationality" is a neologism; any generalizable norm of reason
that is an alternative to the norm of formal rationality will necessarily be procedural
rather than substantive.
531
rejects both Marxism's criterion of the labor theory of value and econo-
mists' criterion of utility. For him, value is determined not by empirical
consumers' preferences but by societal instrumentality, by a maximiza-
tion of the means to systemic "want satisfaction. " The latter involves both
instrumental adaptation to the absolute necessity of what Hannah Arendt
termed the life process ("exigencies of the external situation") and instru-
mental adaptation to the culturally infused necessity of system units
("wealth") (Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 21; Arendt [1958] 1971,
pp. 79-135). Thus, value means for Parsons the degree of societal adapt-
ability in terms of instruments or facilities available to secure societal
goals, and not the degree of inherent labor power involved or the degree
to which consumers' inherent preferences are satisfied:
We repeat: the goal of the economy is not simply the production of

income for the utility of an aggregate of individuals. It is the maximization
of production relative to the whole complex of institutionalized value-
systems and functions of the society and its subsystems. As a matter of fact,
if we view the goal of the economy as defined strictly by socially structured
goals, it becomes inappropriate to even refer to utility at this level in terms
of individual preference lists or indifference curves. This view of utility also
means that, in formulating concepts of social utility or utility in a social
context, it is not necessary even to consider the time-honoured economic
problems of the interpersonal comparability of utility....
Utility, then, is the economic value of physical, social or cultural objects
in accord with their significance as facilities for solving the adaptive prob-
lems of social systems. Wealth is the aggregate of this value for a given
social system at a given time (Adam Smith was correct to speak of the
wealth of nations rather than their individual members)....
We realize that this position runs counter to what is probably the domi-
nant strand of at least the English-speaking tradition of economics. We feel
that the prominence of this "individualistic" strain . . . is a relic of the
historical association of economic theory with utilitarian philosophy and
psychology. [Parsons and Smelser (1956) 1969, pp. 22-23]
One can rephrase Parsons's objection to Marxism's standard in a way

that is very similar to Arendt's critique of Marx's failure to distinguish
laboring for consumables from working for durable artifacts (Arendt
[1958] 1971, pp. 79-174). The concept of labor's power is not self-evident,
or a priori, as an economic concept. Instead, its theoretical defense-to
say nothing of its conversion into a practicable political program-
depends on an analytically nonrational (not means-end rational) set of
norms that literally permit the common recognition and protection of
manifestations of labor's power. Few Marxists have seen this clearly, but
Ernest Mandel comes very close with the following insight: "Never-
theless, this anthropological concept of alienation [in Marx's Paris Manu-
scripts], though it goes further than Hegel because it issues in a solution,
532
remains largely philosophical and speculative. It lacks empirical founda-

tions. It has not been proved" (Mandel 1971, p. 161). The idea that power
is inherent in empirical acts of laboring presupposes the possibility, not
the immutability, of a political or normative collectivity that recognizes
and protects the manifestations of that power and its products in the
creation of a world valued by societal units. If such a collectivity is not
capable of justifying such recognition and protection, then labor's power
cannot be assumed to be a more important concern than effective organi-
zation in the interests of perpetual adaptation to the exigencies of the
rationalization process.
In short, the only other assumption under which Marxism can operate,
aside from assuming the institutionalization of a formal political realm
bearing differentiated-not unmediated-authority and responsibility, is
that in the future Gemeinwesen there will be a Lockeian "natural identity
of interests" or society-wide consensus regarding the nonrational re-
straints placed on rationalization. In addition, there will be no need to
fear arbitrary uses of collective power in securing genuine consensus
(Parsons [1965] 1967, pp. 119-20; e.g., Ollman 1977). Since in the mod-
ern world to make such assumptions is to make a leap of faith, Parsons
characterizes such Marxian theory as an "activist religion."
In fact, it is because Parsons considers a society-wide consensus-or a
class-wide consensus, for that matter-regarding nonrational restraints
on the expansion of rationalization to be necessarily problematic that he
considers collective attempts to recognize and protect labor's power and
its products in the name of absolute, substantive norms to be inherently
impracticable. This leads to an irony. Parsons, routinely accused of being
a consensus theorist, cannot even conceptually incorporate the issue of
the alienation and disalienation of labor's power because societal consen-
sus on specific nonrational norms appears to him too problematic. In
contrast, Marxism-presumably a conflict theory-incorporates the al-
ternative of disalienation only because it assumes either that abundance
and unmediated access to the means of production are possibilities or that
a spontaneous consensus regarding specific normative restraints on ra-
tionalization is a possibility.
The effect of this irony, however, is even more remarkable. Parsons,
often dismissed as being abstract and failing to account for empirical
phenomena, is attempting to formulate an analytical framework that
would permit him to explore systematically the unavoidable forms of
domination that any conceivable social system, capitalist or noncapitalist,
must adopt regardless of the substantive policies being pursued. Other
theorists, self-characterized as "realistically" examining the actual and
potential conflicts in modern society, dismiss a detailed analysis of the
nonrational restraints on rationalization and, instead, hold that the cen-
533
tral concept of alienation hinges on the absolutist standard of a possible

social system that avoids all forms of domination.
The foregoing reconstruction of Parsons's response to Marxism's con-
cept of alienation parallels Arendt's concern about the decline of a com-
mon world of meaning due to the expansion of rationalization (Arendt
[1951] 1969; [1958] 1971). For Arendt, Marx stressed labor's productivity
but disregarded the issue of the durability of the eventual products, which
are the basis for a common world of meaning. For Arendt, any distinction
between labor and work requires the recognition and protection of the
durable products of work by "a public realm," or else by substantive
values held in common. If such protection is lacking, the encroachments
of rationalization tend to reduce all work, and its durable products, to
labor, consumables, and "the life process."
Like Arendt's view of laboring and consumption, Parsons's analytical
schema involves a focus on service's productivity, disregarding the dura-
bility of service's products, in the economic subsystem. The latter, by
definition, functions to adapt instrumentally to the social goal of accom-
modating the expansion of rationalization in modern social systems.
However, unlike Arendt, Parsons indicates that service is not exertion as
a means to service's own reproduction in the life process, but rather, is a
means to societal want satisfaction. The latter, for Parsons, always incor-
porates nonrational elements that by definition cannot be reducible to the
means-end schema of the life process, but this departure from Arendt
leads Parsons to the other three subsystems of the social system.
APPENDIX A
The Rational and the Nonrational in Parsons's Subsystems
On the substantive and empirical level, all four subsystems ultimately

accommodate the ceaseless expansion of Weber's means-ends rationaliza-
tion. The problem Parsons is getting at with his analytical categories is
why the accommodation of rationalization is ever mediated, or why
rationalization has not expanded into every area of life so thoroughly that
everything is bureaucratized empirically, as Weber at times feared.
My point that the economic and political subsystems constitute the
analytically defined process of Weberian rationalization, and that the
societal community and fiduciary subsystems constitute what Parsons
analytically defined as "the nonrational realm" (or restraints on or the
mediation of the most immediate accommodation of Weberian rational-
ization), is based on my reading of Parsons's work as a whole from the
1920s through the 1970s (in particular, his critique of utilitarianism [e.g.,
(1937) 1968] and his emphasis on forms of organization and on legality
[e.g., Parsons and Platt 1973; Parsons 1977]). In other papers I have
534
addressed both the demarcation between sets of subsystems in Parsons

and the ways in which Parsons and Jurgen Habermas define rationality.
For purposes of this essay, I merely state two major reasons why I believe
that my explicit demarcation is consistent with Parsons's schemas and his
intention as they evolved over the years.
First, I see Parsons, indebted to Weber, as always departing from an
appreciation of the tendency toward entropy or normative breakdown of
all posttraditional societies, a tendency due to the expansion of means-
ends rationalization into all areas of life (e.g., Parsons [1937] 1968, pp.
751-53; Parsons and Smelser [1956] 1969, p. 292). If the economic and
political subsystems are taken in isolation, they account for the Weberian
expansion of rationalization, but they cannot possibly account for social
cohesion. If the societal community and fiduciary subsystems are taken in
isolation, they account for the possibility of social cohesion but they can-
not account for even the mediated accommodation of the systemic drift
toward efficient production and effective organization. My thesis, which I
can merely state here without elaboration, is that the economy and polity
pressure the societal community and the fiduciary subsystem to adapt
ceaselessly and immediately to means-ends rationalization even if at the
expense of all other (substantive and procedural) norms, but the latter
two subsystems may restrain many of the most immediate accommoda-
tions in the (functional) interest of social coherence or normative integrity.
Second, Parsons's late work on forms of organization and procedural
legality (the latter taken directly from his Harvard colleague Lon Fuller)
makes the demarcation even more evident. For Parsons, there are only
three forms of organization that can possibly be institutionalized in mod-
ern societies: the bureaucratic (or top-down chains of command), the
democratized (or the accumulation of equal opinions, or interests), and
the collegial (or deliberation not necessarily terminated by, or even in-
fluenced by, votes or commands) (e.g., Parsons and Platt 1973, pp. 49-
50, 103-62). (Parsons also speaks of a "competitive" form of organiza-
tion, but it is not really a distinct form of organization; instead, it is a
situation or a context in which organizations may find themselves.)
For Parsons, both the economic and political subsystems tend or drift
toward bureaucratization, the societal community subsystem tends or
drifts toward the democratization of interests (e.g., [1970b] 1977), and
parts of the fiduciary subsystem may increasingly develop the distinctive
collegial form of organization. These parts were seen by Parsons to com-
prise the forms and procedures of what he called "the academic system"
(including the university, the enterprise of science, and various profes-
sions and intellectual networks) as opposed to other parts of the fiduciary
subsystem that comprise substantive ways of life or lived experience (in-
cluding the family, the community, ethnicity, and religion).
535
Following Weber (and Michels and Pareto), Parsons accepted the view
that formal democracy does not at all restrain the tendency toward bu-
reaucratization (and the relatively immediate accommodation of means-
ends rationalization), whereas collegial formations are inherently a
restraint on both bureaucracy and formal democracy. However, he in-
sisted, against Weber, that collegial formations, along with Fuller's pro-
cedural legality, are becoming increasingly important for social cohesion
precisely because common beliefs regarding substantive ways of life con-
tinue to break down. For Parsons, although the products of science or of
the university may be consistent with the norm of formal rationality and
the immediate accommodation of rationalization, the integrity of the uni-
versity and of the scientific enterprise as institutions rests ultimately on a
nonrational form of organization.
Finally, the societal community subsystem is not the locus of the colle-
gial form of organization or of fiduciary responsibility for procedural
norms, but the institutionalization of procedural legality permits the
greatest (the most democratized) competition among interest groups try-
ing to influence the polity with their pluralistic substantive interests. The
societal community, then, is seen by Parsons to be increasingly grounded
on both (competing) substantive and (generalizable) procedural norms,
and both types of norms must be, in some part, nonrational-not for-
mally rational-if there is to be cohesion in modern societies despite the
systemic pressures toward entropy.
APPENDIX B
Macpherson and the Literature on Alienation
My primary concern in this paper is to present Parsons's views on labor

and service-which have not been systematically explored in the litera-
ture-rather than to explore once again Marx's original categories. The
latter has been done expertly in scores of excellent studies of Marx's
theory of alienation. For two reasons, I use Macpherson for purposes of
illustration.
First, Macpherson's rendition is clear and accessible and is also com-
pletely consistent with more analytical or philosophical commentaries
cited below that stick closely to Marx's own categories.
Second, Macpherson's direct response to liberal-democratic theories of
power has been influential among Marxists ever since his study of posses-
sive individualism in early liberal theory (Macpherson 1962), and it ap-
peals to me because I have been working on a theory of procedural
restraints on arbitrary power-based on a synthesis of concepts from
both Parsons and Habermas-that updates principles of constitutional-
ism. In my view, a view that Frank Parkin (1979, pp. 177-78) has
536
emphasized, the great lacuna in Marxian theory is not the utopianism of

the prospects for disalienation but the fact that "there is still no general
schema of a socialist political system that indicates how power should be
distributed, how conflicting interests should be represented and resolved,
how abuses of socialist legality should be checked, and so on."
Marx's own views on alienation are contained in several works, among
them: The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ([1844] 1964,
pp. 68-73, 106-69); The German Ideology ([1846] 1970, pp. 43-50, 60,
75-76, 84-85); Grundrisse ([1857-58] 1973), esp. "The Fragment on Ma-
chines" (pp. 692-706); and Capital, vol. 1 ([1861-67] 1970, pp. 71-83,
432, 570-71, 645). Georg Lukacs's ([1922] 1972) "Reification and the
Consciousness of the Proletariat" is rightly considered the most important
elaboration and development of Marx's position; Lukaics wrote without
having access to either The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts or the
Grundrisse. Two contemporary writers indebted to Lukaics whom I have
found useful are Agnes Heller (1972) and Andrew Arato (1972); for Hel-
ler, the only generalizable norm in Marxism is abundance or "man-rich-
in-needs." In addition, Pier Aldo Rovatti's essays (1972, 1973a, 1973b)
continue the rigorous analytical tradition of Marxian thinking on aliena-
tion, but they focus on the need to ground a philosophical anthropology-
a "definition of man"-rather than on offering a practicable alternative to
liberal democracy.
Rovatti's thesis is that Marx's critique of political economy and of
participants' perceptions of reality within everyday life in the capitalist
mode of production is based on a "leap" by Marx to an alternative notion
of "reality" where history is increasingly made by the collective partici-
pants consciously rather than unconsciously (1972, p. 94). This location of
a leap in Marx's theory has been widely acknowledged by both critics and
proponents of Marxism. The critics treat it as the religious, eschatolog-
ical, or absolutist element in Marx, not unlike Kierkegaard's leap of faith
(even though the latter was individualistic); for example, Shlomo Avineri
(1970, p. 202), one of the best commentators on Marx's work as a whole,
says bluntly that Marx seems "to have been the last of the Lutherans."
However, even the proponents have responded to Marx's leap to an
alternative to capitalist reality by attempting to reduce or eliminate the
qualitative distance of the leap, by focusing on (1) the dynamics of sys-
temic change (structuralist Marxism, e.g., Althusser), (2) the activity of
an idealized proletariat (e.g., Lukacs), (3) the activity of an enlightened
vanguard (e.g., Lenin), (4) the activity of individuals around a collec-
tively recognized set of needs or constituted meaning of the world
(phenomenological Marxism and sections of the Frankfurt school), or (5)
practical or reasoned activity consistent with the procedures of nondis-
torted communication (e.g., Habermas, Apel).
537
Habermas has recently (1982, pp. 225-26) noted how Marx's own
grounding for the critique of alienation shifted over time and has at-
tempted to provide a new, firmer ground: "But Marx himself immediately
abandoned the anthropological model of labor as externalization, which
still furnished the standard for the critique of alienated labor in the 'Paris
Manuscripts,' and shifted the burden of normative grounding to the labor
theory of value. Later the analysis of commodity fetishism was supposed
to explain the effects of reification. . In my theory of communicative
action . . . I attempt to provide an equivalent for these reflections."
Marxism's turn to the labor theory of value, or the concept of surplus
value, has been itself a source of controversy for generations of Marxists.
Eric Olin Wright (1975) provides an excellent overview of the debate, and
Ronald L. Meek (1973) explores the categories.
Finally, the two standard, lengthy studies of alienation, consistent in
every regard with Macpherson's position, remain those by Istvan Mes-
zaros (1972), a former student of Lukacs, and Bertell Ollman (1971).
Richard J. Bernstein (1971, pp. 11-83) and Ernest Mandel (1971, pp.
154-86) provide overviews of the "voluminous" literature on alienation.
The informative study by George Peter Lyman (1973) updates the ab-
solutist critiques of alienation and reification based on a phenomenology
of needs.
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540

Talcott Parso's Critique of Marx Concept of Alienation.

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Talcott Parsons's Analytical Critique of Marxism's Concept of Alienation

Author(s): David Sciulli

Parsons's approach to the problem of alienation is compared with

( 1984 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

514 AJS Volume 90 Number 3

by conscious, collective action directed to emancipation or disalienation.

PARSONS'S ECONOMIC SUBSYSTEM AND HIS

The economic subsystem is defined by Parsons by its analytical func-

"useful fictions"-as Weber characterized his ideal types. Rather, Par-

MACPHERSON ON ALIENATION AND POWER

jected or avoided, the freedom not to enter into exchange relationships at

replaced by infinite consumption and production, with moments of recov-

PARSONS'S ANALYSIS OF LABOR AND SERVICE

In Parsons's analysis of the economic function, the four factors of produc-

4 The combinatorial process is that interrelationship between "factor" inputs within

alienation is developed in detail in Economy and Society ([1956] 1969),

Since we define service as an input of power from the economy to the

Regarding the distinction between goods and services (Parsons and

it must first be mediated by the political subsystem, the combinatorial

6 As an example of how Parsons's analytical categories cut across empirical organiza-

however, characterize it as a mindless process of production and con-

labor is only one factor of production, a sufficiently differentiated econ-

It is important to note that political controls are not coterminous with

Similarly, for Parsons, durable consumer goods in the empirical house-

COMPARING PARSONS'S APPROACH WITH THE

By his analytical separation of labor and service, Parsons casts a new

not formally rational. Given Weber's work, Marxism cannot conceptually

We repeat: the goal of the economy is not simply the production of

One can rephrase Parsons's objection to Marxism's standard in a way

remains largely philosophical and speculative. It lacks empirical founda-

tral concept of alienation hinges on the absolutist standard of a possible

On the substantive and empirical level, all four subsystems ultimately

addressed both the demarcation between sets of subsystems in Parsons

My primary concern in this paper is to present Parsons's views on labor

emphasized, the great lacuna in Marxian theory is not the utopianism of

Apel, K-O. 1980. Towards a Transformation of Philosophy. London: Routledge &

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