Jurriaan Bendien <[email protected]> wrote: > whether they followed Adorno & Horkheimer’s critical theory, C. Wright Mills, Louis Althusser’s strucuralism, Gerald Cohen’s functionalism, or Bowles & Gintis etc. etc., the Marxists almost all accepted the structural functionalist concept of role. <
So what is the "structural functionalist concept of role"? that people's tastes/preferences/values/ideologies/etc. are determined by their position in the social structure so that their actions reproduce the system over time? I wish people would drop the habit of blanket statements about what "Marxists" believe. That approach veers toward sectarianism. And laundry lists of "Marxists" don't help, since Jurriaan presents no evidence that any of these worthies believe in this theory of the "role." The absence of a reasoned argument applies most to those famous Marxists named "etc., etc." Instead of blanket statements or laundry lists, what's needed is a argument about something much more specific. Is there someone on pen-l, for example, who explicitly embraces "the structural functionalist concept of role." (BTW, Mills didn't think of himself as a "Marxist" as far as I can tell. Maybe he was a left-Weberian. Of course, the whole argument about who is and who is not a "Marxist" is a useless game.) -- Jim Devine / "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick
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