877

JEFFREY ALEXANDER AND THE SEARCH FOR M U L T I - D I M E N S I O N A L T H E O R Y

RANDALL COLLINS

A discussion of Jeffrey C. Alexander, Theoretical Logic in Sociology, Volume 3, The Classical Attempt at Theoretical Synthesis: Max Weber, Volume 4, The Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought: Talcott Par- sons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).

The publication of Jeffrey Alexander's four-volume Theoretical Logic in Sociology was unquestionably a historic event in at least one respect: it

marks the entry of sociological publishing into the era of mega-hype. Never before has a sociological work been trumpeted by such lavish advertising, by

such elaborate physical production, and by such a range of support from the

big names of the discipline. Even Alvin Gouldner joined in, with his state-

ment that "the publication of this work will be a major event in the lives of

American sociologists." Rarely have the advance comments been so adulato-

ry; rarely have the post-publication reviewers been so vituperative. The huge

promotional build-up created a backlash; it has been hard to find a review

that was favorable, or even temperate in its criticism.

All this is unfortunate, because it obscures Alexander's real aims, and his real

achievement. Alexander has been the victim of the Carl Lewis syndrome

applied to sociology. Having had it announced in all quarters that one will win four gold medals in the Olympics, one becomes an emblem of arrogance

that is hard to live down, whether you win the four gold medals or not. In

Alexander's favor one might say that he didn't do the hyping himself, but had

it done for him. But the result has been the same. Win or lose, he is put in the

position where it seems nothing he does can win back the public favor now

turned against him. Can Jeffrey recover from this? Can the backlash go so far that there will be a backlash against the backlash? Stay tuned.

Department of Sociology, University of California, Riverside.

878

Perhaps this is putting it too facetiously. Sociology is not merely a branch of

the advertising world, and there are real intellectual issues at stake. It is

perfectly true that there is a sincere belief, widespread and probably domi-

nant in our field, that Parsonsian functionalism is a thing of the past,

superceded by more realistic and more fruitful approaches. But Alexander

does not wish merely to defend and revive Parsons. In fact, he accepts much

of the criticism of functionalism, especially the criticism from the left. His

aim is to purify, to find the strength of Parsons's project, and to go beyond.

Much of what Alexander has been taken to task for in the reception of his

first volume is dealt with in the fourth volume. The trouble is many people

have gotten turned off by the first two volumes (and their reviews) and may

not want to read the last volumes. Maybe this is Alexander's fault for having

written such a big book. But it would be too bad, because it is a book that gets

better steadily toward the end.

It is very much a book that needs to be seen as a whole. Volume 1 is the

methodological prologue. It aroused enthusiasm in some quarters, I think,

because of the loftiness of its aim, and especially because of the way it

vindicated the anti-positivist mood that had grown up in the 1970s, giving a

kind of official recognition that this rebellion had captured the high ground

f rom the narrow and stultifying positivism that dominated in the 1950s and

1960s. (I suspect this is why Gouldner liked this project so much.) At the same time, its announced intention to bring back Parsonsian action theory,

and the way the book appeared to parellel Parsons's Structure of Social Action, put the anti-functionalist forces on war-alert. Then came Volume 2,

probably the weakest of the four. What it says about Durkheim was some-

what distorted (see my review in Contemporary Sociology, May 1984,

255 257). What it says about Marx was okay by my lights, al though not a

novel or breakthrough interpretation in any way. In either case, this book

was bound to raise people's hackles, especially Marxists who saw it as a

critique of Marx as a one-sided materialist. In fact, it isn't until we get to

Volume 4 that we see that Alexander was only highlighting certain aspects,

setting up Durkheim and Marx as opposing wings of the sociological tradi-

tion that would have to be integrated later. Alexander's aim has not been to

replace Marx with Parsons, but instead to re-do Parsonsian theory in a

Marxian direction. This was obscured by the fact that Volume 2 has more of

a polemical quality than Alexander, I believe, actually intended.

Volume 3, on Weber, is qualitatively different. Taken by itself, it is an important, challenging book on our most dominant classic figure. It is not a

definitive treatment of Weber, nor was it intended as such. But it is a valuable, fresh perspective on what Weber achieved and didn't achieve, and

879

it sets a new standard in Weber scholarship. It moves beyond the one-sided

critiques, interpretations, and defenses of Weber that have made up the

existing literature, to the crucial interpretive point: that Weber is not only

multi-stranded, but grossly inconsistent between different parts of his work,

and especially between his methodological pronouncements and what he

actually did. This volume also has more substantive content than the one on

Durkheim and Marx, mainly because Weber was often closer than the other

two classics to the presuppositional level of analysis on which Alexander

likes to work. I think Alexander has penetrated nearer to what Weber was

truly like than anyone else yet. This isn't to say that a one-sided selection

from Weber might not be more fruitful to work with for our own purposes,

but apart from this "presentist" view, Alexander for my money is the tops.

Finally, Volume 4, on Talcott Parsons. This is the payoff of the whole work.

It is also, in its own right, the most important volume ever published on

Parsons. In many ways it is better than Parsons himself, simply as a treat-

ment of the Parsonsian system. Not the least of its points of superiority in its

writing style. Alexander is lucid and even (so far as this is possible) light,

where Parsons was always heavy and turgid. Part of this comes from their

differing stances as an author; Alexander is given to the personal and direct

statement of his argument, admitting where there is controversy and precise-

ly where he stands on it, whereas Parsons pompously cloaked himself in

circumlocutions and the passive voice.

To quote just one example of Alexander's style, taken almost at random

(though from Volume 3 rather than Volume 4): "Need ! add that I am not

speaking of actual influence or concrete reference? Weber and Durkheim

were contemporaries, but no one has been able to establish any references by

either to the other's work. I am using 'Durkheim' , then, to indicate the

theoretical position which I attributed to him in volume 2" (146). Then

imagine how Parsons would have said this.

But also, this is where Alexander is most at home. Of all the theorists treated,

Parsons has the most justice done to his substantive concerns, because

Alexander operates on the same level of analysis. We should not mistake this

for a slavish at tachment to Parsons's formulations. Alexander's debt to

Parsons is primarily in the analytical strategy, and above all in the way that

the strategy was intended (or how Alexander thinks it should be intended),

rather than in Parsons's own ideological and substantive commitments. We should never forget, this is a critique of Parsons, and an effort to go beyond.

In the process, Alexander ends up making Parsons more important at least in

my mind than he was before I read the book. Any time a book carl do that for

880

its subject, especially for a subject one has hitherto rather disliked, you know it has something going for it.

What follows will take up the third and fourth volumes in turn, then

conclude with some reflections on Alexander's overall project.

Weber as the Failure of Multi-dimensionality

Weber's work has been the subject of numerous interpretations and the

take-off point for many of the opposing wings of modern social theory. Parsons made him a cornerstone of his functionalist synthesis; Merton

developed an idealist "Merton thesis" on the connection between Puritanism

and science to go along with an apparently idealist "Weber thesis" on the

origins of capitalism. Recently Schluchter has made Weber into an evolu-

tionist of world-historical rationalization. In contrast, Bendix and Roth put

forward a political Weber, complex and unadulterated by evolutionist and

other simplifications, but with pride of place to the independent role played

by ideas in history. Further left, from Gerth and Mills onward we find a

conflict version of Weber, in some cases interpreted as a form of materialism,

in others as a multi-dimensional version of Marx and Engels. There are today's historically-oriented Marxists, most of whom make their revisions in

a Weberian direction: so much so that some now declare there are only "left-Weberians" and "right-Weberians." And then there are the action-

theory Weberians, those that remember Weber as the advocate of methodo-

logical individualism and verstehen, as the progenitor of Alfred Schutz and

hence of phenomenological sociology.

So who is correct in these debates? Will the real Max Weber please stand up?

Or should one merely say that the ghost of Max Weber, torn limb from limb,

has spread over the landscape and now is almost coextensive with the warring states of current sociology?

One of the merits of Alexander's Volume 3 is that he confronts the question head-on, and does not shrink from the solution that no one wants to adopt. That is: Weber is both genuinely multi-dimensional, and genuinely incon- sistent. Our battles over the true Weber have been fought in a spirit of the contemporary uses we might make of Weberian ideas; the opposing English translations and interpretations of Weber, put forward by the Parsonsians

and by Gerth/Mills et al., were a major tactic in the war between functional- ism and conflict theory. Other interpretations of Weber have also been made in the spirit of the contemporary theories that might be built upon them. I have no personal quarrel with this as a tactic. I happen to think that the

881

materialist side of Weber is the more valuable side, and that one ought to

exploit this gold mine for our own purposes as much as we can. But there is

the nagging question of what to do with the part that doesn't fit. Most of us

have taken the line that our own particular preference is the fundamental

Weber, and that the rest is only some sort of mistake, either Weber's or that

of commentators other than ourselves. The most adulatory line, of course, is

to deny that Weber was inconsistent at all. lnstead, one admires him precise-

ly for the way he encompasses everything, action as well as structure, ideas,

values, material interests - it's all there, and Weber thus becomes the corn-

pleat sociologist.

Now it is this multi-dimensional Weber that is of central concern to Alex-

ander. The main theme of his four-volume work, in fact, is the search for

multi-dimensionality. As one recalls from Volume 1, positivist views of

science are unable to found themselves. The relevance of the empirical world

always depends on theory; what, .then, does theory depend on? Alexander

does not wish to go to the anti-positivist extreme, to sheer relativism or the

sheer imperatives of praxis ideology, lnstead, he proposes a criterion of

objectivity in the one place it can be found: in the implicit standard within

theory itself, that is, multi-dimensionality. This rather Fichte-like maneuver

of grounding the standard of logic upon its own inner tendencies gives

Alexander a powerful vantage point f rom which to view the attempts and

failures of sociological theory. (It also accounts for why his sequence of

Marx /Durkhe im, Weber, Parsons, has the peculiar dialectical quality that it

does, as the"theoretical logic" works itself out in real history; but more of this

in the conclusion.)

Thus Alexander cannot take lightly the question of just how multi-dimen-

sional Weber really was. Weber is obviously the prime candidate for snatch-

ing the brass ring on this sociological merry-go-round. The opposing inter-

pretations of Weber are a clue that we fallible, one-sided mortals, with our

theoretical polemics, have been confronting an even more wondrous beast

than we thought. Alexander would like all the opposing models to be true

simultaneously, which of course means that each one-sided view has to be

criticized in so far as it fails to see the side it has left out. But more than that.

Alexander must examine the nature of this multi-dimensionality, to see

whether it is the genuine article. Hence he is particularly suspicious of views of Weber that simply extol his multi-sided achievement. For Alexander is

seeking the holy grail, a multi-dimensional theory in which everything fits

together. He can't be satisfied with one that merely mentions the different dimensions, one on this page and a second on another, but does not integrate

them. Alas, Weber turns out to be more like the latter possibility. His works

882

are not entirely an eclectic jumble, like a bunch of old shoes thrown together

in the bottom of a closet, and Alexander does find some leading places where

Weber shows how the idealist and materialist dimensions interpenetrate one another. But this happens all too rarely, Alexander finds, and for the rest

Weber slides off into one camp or the other.

Alexander finds these multi-dimensional highlights in portions of Weber's

treatments of religion, of social class, and especially in his methodological

writings. In general, Alexander sees Weber as well grounded in the material-

ist side: material resources, conditions, and interests are pervasive both in his

early, pre-breakdown writings, and in a good deal of his later work. Indeed, Alexander sees Weber as falling offfrom multidimensionality almost entirely

on the materialist side. (A work like The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, written in 1909, Alexander dismisses as "almost exclusively

instrumental and deterministic," (p. 96), a view of politically and even

geographically determined economics.) Hence the problem is to find places

where Weber sees that political and economic action is penetrated by reli-

gious, normative, and ideal conditions.

One such place, of course, is in the themes of Weber's sociology of religion.

Not only is the Protestant Ethic an exemplar of economics responding to

religious world-views and motivations, but in a broader scale the entire

development of Western capitalism can be seen as the product of a religious- ly-based rationalization of daily life. Stratification, too, can be seen not as the

one-sided product of material conditions and interests, but as genuinely

multi-dimensional in its foundations. This is because the very conditions for

the formation of classes depends upon the historical process, unique to the

West, in which closed kinship groups were broken open to common political

citizenship and to the differentiating forces of the market: and this was a

process conditioned by religious and legal history. Then, too, the content of the status ideals that turn classes into status groups (like Marx's Klassefuer sich) are not products of economic positions, but derive autonomously, in

most cases, from religion.

These arguments, though, are on the level of historical causes and effects.

Though there is little doubt that Weber himself believed he was showing the autonomous role of ideas and values in history, one may also extend the causal chain further back, so that one looks for the material and political

conditions that gave rise to the religious forms and ideas themselves. This bothers Alexander, though he is not really explicit about this point, because he wants the ideas and values to be really autonomous, not determined by anything at all. The trouble is there are plenty of strands in Weber where he

883

suggests material/political conditions for the development of Confucian

values, for theological rationalization in church bureaucracies, Judaic pro-

phecy in the international political situation of the Yahweh war-confedera- tion, and so forth. One might easily slip into a sort of three-step model, in which ideas and values are a middle step, but material conditions are

sandwiched around them at both ends. I think this is the reason why

Alexander characterizes so much of Weber's concrete sociology, especially

the comparative studies of the world religions, and also his political sociol-

ogy (which often has the tone of even more flat-out realpolitik), as a "retreat from multi-dimensionality."

The saving grace, if there is one, is where Weber writes about fundamental methodology in the analysis of human action, and also in his consideration

of religious motives. Above all in Roscher and Knies: the Logical Problems of Historical Economics, and again in the methodological introduction to

Economy and Society, Weber sets out the verstehen method. The ideal side is

thus methodologically at the center of the sociological enterprise, because our aim, Weber asserts, is to understand emphatically the motives, "reprodu-

cible in inner experience" (Roscher and Knies, p. 125) that caused the actor to

do what he or she did. Thus every action, economic, political, religious, familial, can be taken apart into its inner beliefs and values. This is a truly

multi-dimensional scheme, because it always situates these motives amidst

material conditions in the external world. It is, in fact, the starting point for Parsons's theory of action, which (at least at first) was even more explicitly

multi-dimensional. Alexander detects some places where even here Weber

has left the door open for devils in this paradise, mainly by including a sub-type of Zweckrationalitaet in which the utilitarian pursuit of ends is so

overwhelming that the action can be predicted merely from the external

circumstances. But at least there has been a glimpse of the paradigmatic ideal

of multi-dimensionality, in which every action in the material world is

simultaneously penetrated by consciousness, ideas, values, and apparently a crucial consideration for Alexander free will.

I am afraid, though, that I have trouble accepting this paradigm, at least as a final stopping place. For one thing, it is all too apparent that Weber ignores it

much of the time. It is as if there were two Webers, one who emerges when he

writes about methodology, and another who usually takes over when he is actually doing sociological analysis. Hence, I think, the somewhat mislead-

ing reputation of Weber as an action theorist. Yes, he certainly is in his methodology, But there are hundreds of pages elsewhere, where Weber goes directly to the structures, and to interest groups fighting it out for power and precedence within them. The concrete individual, interacting in a situation,

884

hardly ever makes an appearance in Weber's writings. Even when Weber seems to be sketching motives and world-views, they are attached to general-

ized groups. Even his Protestant Ethic, an idealist explanat ion if there ever

was one, never gives us the sense of particular individual puritans, sitting in

their shop, interacting with their customers, constructing situational social

reality. Now maybe you could say Weber is glossing all this and that it is implied. But a more straightforward interpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is that Weber has examined a set of doctrinal texts: Benjamin Franklin, Richard Baxter, and so forth, and then connected

these to what Weber believes is the ideal-typical spirit of certain economic

institutions. It is, if you like, macro- to-macro analysis, not micro-situational,

even in its general form. One of the macro-condit ions is subjective, to be sure:

a body of doctrines, held not by any particular individual in any particular

situation, but, as it were, floating in the air over the economic activity of an

historical era. The problems confronted by a true micro/subjective sociol-

ogy, of how one interprets ideas so that they become applicable to particular

situations, are not present in Weber's analysis. He doesn't side-step them;

they simply don't arise.

This part of the multi-dimensional synthesis, then, falls apar t under exami-

nation too. I think this relates to a larger weakness in Alexander 's analysis.

He sets out with a model of multi-dimensionality, which must encompass two dichotomies: the problem of "action" ( instrumental /material is t versus

ideal /normat ive) and the problem of "order" (micro/negot iated versus sui

generis/emergent) . Now it happens that Alexander concentrates all his

at tention on the one-sidedness of various theorists on the action (material/

ideal) dimension, and generally ignores problems with the order (mic ro /ma-

cro) dimension. There is a concrete reason for this: Alexander 's classics Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Parsons - all take the stance that order does have a

macro, emergent, sui generis quality to it. Weber (and, after him, Parsons)

appears to be something of an exception to this, in the sense that he devotes considerable at tention to the element of individual action, as well as to

macro-structure. But as Alexander himself points out (pp. 151-152), Weber

is not really an "individualistic" thinker, though he is sometimes a subjectivis- tic one. Weber is not really a synthesis of the micro and the macro, because he has merely juxtaposed the two in different parts of his work. When he writes methodology, he sounds like an action theorist, as long as one doesn't probe too deeply, and ask how it is the structures really emerge f rom these individ- ual interpretations. ' I was about to write, how structures emerge f rom indi- vidual interactions, but he doesn't even get this far: in his methodology, Weber is always talking about individual orientations, means-ends rationali- ty and so forth, but there is no real interaction between individuals even as he

885

speaks of social action as mutual orientation towards each other's behavior.

There are no situations in Weber, nothing that remotely resembles Erving

Goffman and the analysis of everyday life. One is tempted to say, there are a

series of isolated individuals in Weber, with ideas and values floating down to

them from historical precedent, and then on the other hand fully realized

organizations and movements that make up the real content of historical

analysis. On the micro/macro dimension, then, Weber didn't even "retreat

from multidimensionality," because he never really got that far.

There is one last bastian that Alexander defends, and here | think he holds his

own. We are back now on the action dimension, looking for ways that ideas

are autonomously influential in the material world. Alexander points out

that for Weber one essential motive in religious conduct is the desire to

understand the worm as meaningful and consistent. This implies, first of all,

that one of the primordial human interests is something apart from any other

desire for power, status, or material goods. It is the drive of the pure

intellectual. And who can deny it? Least of all intellectuals like ourselves: for

all that we want our work to be dominant, to make ourselves affluent,

tenured, or politically influential, we also want to be right. No doubt this

motive exists in varying strengths, and emerges more under some conditions

than others. But | have no doubt that there is autonomous intellectual

interest about the cosmos or some portion of it. The other thing it implies is

that ideas have their own logic. What makes thoughts consistent or incon-

sistent, meaningful or meaningless, is not reducible to our material condi-

tions and social relationships. Ideas do have consequences, at least for other

ideas.

Now this might seem to affect only that tiny body of persons who are pure

intellectuals. But its effect, according to Weber and Alexander, is far

broader. Not only should we avoid being snobbish about how many persons

are capable of a concern for meaning, oriented towards a consistent world-

view and bothered by contradictions. Weber goes on to make this intellectual

concern the basis of religion in general. Religion has its own dynamic,

however embedded it is in the material conditions and power interests of

priests, church bureaucrats, educational politicians, legitimacy-hungry

rulers, and self-justifying status-groups. It is ultimately an effort to make a

consistent world-view of the cosmos and ourselves in it, and especially of how our efforts, sufferings, and inevitable deaths can be reconciled with the

rest of what we believe. Thus this "intellectual" interest in meaning and

consistency opens the way for history to be guided by the logic of ideas.

I have tried to push Alexander back into a corner, but I will concede him his

886

corner. The question is: how big a corner of the sociological universe is it? And is there no danger that sociology itself, via the sociology of ideas, might eventually push its way into that corner itselff.~ But let us leave this for the conclusion, and move on to Talcott Parsons.

Parsons and Beyond

Oddly enough, Volume 4 is less problematic. There is hardly anything in this book, at least on Parsons himself, that I disagree with. Parsons emerges, above all, as the apostle of multi-dimensionality. The L-1-G-A scheme and

the omnipresent (or infamous) four-fold boxes are best seen as mnemonic devices to keep this fact always before our attention. Like the three preceding volumes, this one has a two-fold rhythm. The first five chapters lay out

Parsons's theoretical development, with a guiding theme of defending Par- sons against his critics. Where they have taken him to task for being static, idealistic, consensus-oriented, ignoring conflict, change, and the material

world, Alexander replies by pointing out how Parsons deals with these, too, in his overall scheme. Alexander makes continuous use of the distinction between the general analytical level of theoretical presuppositions, and the concrete empirical commitments made in analyzing particular historical phenomena. Parsons's critics, Alexander claims, have collapsed these two levels, and have taken Parsons's assertion, say, of the empirical equilibrium and value-consensus of a particular society at one time, for a more general commitment to the theoretical position that all societies must be integrated

around a value consensus. In fact, Parsons devotes a great deal of attention to the analysis of social change, as a process of differentiation in which strains between values and institutional sectors produce conflict, and hence

ramifying changes throughout society. Equilibrium and value-consensus may be only an analytical reference point, never really approached in reality (much like economists' fictitious equilibrium point around which supplies and demands are always fluctuating).

in the last five chapters, Alexander puts on his other hat. He now joins the critics, but operating at a higher level of analysis. Though he has defended Parsons on the level of his most general theoretical conceptions and inten- tions, he now finds that Parsons makes both methodological and presuppo- sitional errors, which permeate even his fundamental analytical apparatus. He finds Parsons falling into neo-positivism and objectivism, reifying the social system and dropping out his own boxes that imply autonomy to the individual level of analysis. In his functionalism, he conflates presupposi- tional logic with specific commitments on the empirical level, letting his empirical mistakes infect his general conceptual scheme. Functional inter-

887

change becomes conceptualized as stability, the analytical symmetry of

relationships becomes a justification for proclaiming the attainment of the

Good Society. Parsons errs, too, in over-stressing sociological idealism and

attacking unjustifiably the autonomous processes of the instrumental (eco- nomic, political) order. In short, Parsons does not live up to his own

multi-dimensional promise.

That Alexander devotes half the book to defending Parsons, before he begins

his rather thorough critique, will probably annoy some readers, especially those who are not sympathetic in the first place. In fact, Alexander has

produced a critique of Parsons from the left. His aim really is to restore

multi-dimensionality, which means integrating the Marxian side more fully into the overall scheme. Readers who don't like Parsons but who want to

appreciate what Alexander is about might be advised to start with the second

half of the book.

Why should the Parsonsian project be defended? Alexander gives a series of

reasons. First of all, it is our best exemplar of a self-conscious effort to produce a genuinely multi-dimensional theory. The attempt fails, due to

Parsons's backsliding, but Alexander holds it out as a high ground that we

should recapture and move beyond. Secondly, Parsonsian analysis explicitly

shows us the difference between the analytical, presuppositional level of

theory, and more concrete explanatory and empirical levels of analysis. It is

an exemplar of analytical sophistication, in this sense. (Actually, one can find another exemplar in Pareto, from whom Parsons probably learned this. But

Pareto is the main figure Alexander drops from the pantheon, in favor of Marx.) This too is valuable, and it shows us that the levels posited in French

structuralism and in its slightly more empiricist British offshoot, the "New

Social Realism" of Bhaskar et al., have an ancestry in sociology itself.

Alexander proposes a further set of specific strengths offered by the Parson- sian heritage. (I summarize here from Alexander's paper on "Neofunctional-

ism" delivered at the 1984 ASA Meetings at San Antonio.) While conceding

that functionalism does not provide an explanatory theory in the causal

sense, it nevertheless provides the basis in a descriptive model of society as a

system of mutually interacting parts. It concentrates on action as much as on

structure. It allows both integration as a possibility, and deviance and the imposition of social control as facts. Equilibrium is a central analytical conception, but this may be a moving equilibrium or a partial equilibrium as well as a homeostatic, self-correcting one. The approach, moreover, distin- guishes between personalities, culture, and society as equally valid levels of analysis, posits that any of these can be autonomous sources of change, and

888

that tensions among them can provide built-in dynamics in the system. Such an over-arching theory of change, in Alexander's view, would be a theory of

differentiation.

Most of this I think is acceptable, if one stays on a sufficiently high level of

analysis. The theory of change as differentiation, though, is on a more

specific level of historical causes and consequences, and 1 think that as such it

is much less satisfactory as a theory of change than Alexander believes. This

leaves us basically with a very general conceptual scheme, and a check-list of

factors to look into, and we still have the task of constructing sociological

theory in a more specific sense. The main strength of the Parsonian legacy is the effort to be multi-dimensional, to incorporate both Durkheim, Marx and

Weber and I would add, the level of micro-sociology that all of these

theorists left out. And it alerts us to what constitutes a theory on what level of

analysis.

In this perspective, Alexander's four volumes turn out to be a 2000-page prologomena to a theory yet to be written. I would take its main thrust as a

proposal that Marx be brought back into the Parsonian scheme, but we

don't see that much featured in Alexander's checklist just cited. One reason, perhaps, is that Alexander distinguishes so sharply between the presupposi-

tional level and the empirical/explanatory levels of analysis. For him this is a

hierarchy, and the "higher" levels of (meta-)theory are autonomous and

irreducible to the "lower" levels. This part of his polemic against narrowly

reductionist positivist philosophies of science, of the "operationalize-and-

test" mode that was so dogmatically asserted in sociology of the 1950s and

1960s. I would certainly agree that theory has a realm of discourse in which

conceptual and strategic issues can and must be carried on, apart from what they may mean empirically. But it is another thing to claim that theory and

meta-theory are absolutely autonomous, that it always informs the "lower"

empirical levels of study but never can be affected by them. That is tanta- mount to saying that the validity of a theory, or the usefulness of a con-

ceptual model, can never be affected by any criterion of "truth" in the

empirical world, nor by its ability or lack of ability to generate powerful explanatory generalizations that fit the historical and contemporary facts. That is why Alexander went looking for a principle of validity that is completely transcendental, and found it in the criterion of multi-dimension- ality. It follows that the more multi-dimensional theory must always be superior to the less multi-dimensional one, no matter what the empirical

situation may be.

But here I think he has made a strategic error. The reason Weber in his

889

historical works came down so heavily on the side of materialist and realpo- litik explanations was that his research led him that way. 1 believe he was

fully prepared to find as much importance as possible for the Confucian

world-view in the economic history of China. But that led him inexorably

into the ramifications of material causes: after all, Confucian literati had a

particular position within the state and in the stratification of Chinese

society, and it becomes very tempting to follow this line of analysis and to see

(especially comparatively) what conditions seem to be associated with pro-

ducing what kinds of religious outlooks and status claims. Most of Weber's

"retreat" from multi-dimensionality (by which Alexander really means a

movement away from idealist elements) seems to come from his sheer

intellectual interest in following things as far as possible toward their causes.

In a sense, the one ideal factor that I am prepared to admit - the intellectuals'

search for meaning and consistency - is what undermines Alexander's ideal,

balanced blend of ideas and material conditions. We sociological intellectu-

als are hard to keep on a rigidly multi-dimensional leash; when the opportun-

ity comes up to explain something by surrounding social conditions we are

mightily tempted to use it.

What 1 am saying is that multi-dimensionality ought to be taken as a

heuristic strategy, not an epistemological absolute. We have to pay attention

to moral feelings, to world-views, laws, status ideals, and so forth, as well as

to economic and political resources and conflicts: not because there is a

presuppositional fiat that all this must be relevant, but because the best

theorists and researchers of the past have found them to be important

factors. But theory does not have to stop here. Morals and ideals have turned

out to be important in various contexts; but we don' t have to raise them to an

absolute. We should be allowed to press onwards - in fact, we can't stop

ourselves f rom pressing onwards to see if we can't find the principles that

determine these, the conditions under which the morals and ideas take

various forms. This does not have to be done in a rigidly positivistic way,

with everything operationalized according to some statistician's specifica-

tions at every step of the path. But we certainly ought to be open to the

empirical world, in the best sense, via those successive approximations of the

pattern of social reality that we have so far been able to achieve. And if this

search leads us to see that moral and ideal factors too are embedded in

material conditions of a particular sort, then we ought to take that as a theoretical advance, and not a failure.

Alexander wouldn' t admit this, 1 think, because for him one of the key points

of the idealist side is its apparent commitment to free will, to indeterminism.

He uses as a complaint against the materialist side the way it implies

890

deterministic processes. I 'm sorry, but isn't that just a way of saying that we

are looking for explanations, for the conditions under which certain things

happen rather than other kinds of things? The better our explanations, the

more determinism we find. To hold out indeterminism as an ideal for our

field strikes me as self-defeating, or at least backward-looking. I mean that in

the sense that a position that makes indeterminism its central tenet could

never exist all by itself. It would say too little. Indeterminism must always be

a critical position, one that sets itself up in opposition to some more determi-

nistic positions already existing. For only determinism can have content;

indeterminism in itself is purely negative: gloriously free and gloriously

empty.

Multi-dimensionality, then, is more pragmatic and factual than a priori.

Rather than comprising a limitation on generalizable explanation, it can be

part of the apparatus of it. Theory has to be multi-dimensional because that

is the kind of world we are trying to explain. But that doesn't mean that all of

the multiple dimensions must be equal; some may in fact turn out to be

relatively more powerful than others. In this vein, I could go even further and

claim that conflict theory is profoundly multi-dimensional. At least in the

form ! advocate, micro and macro are integrated, not merely juxtaposed.

And this must be done by analytical t ransformation of both, by not merely

accepting our usual conceptualization of what exists on either level; by being

willing to boil down the claims of macro (though leaving some more analytic

macro elements) via micro-translation, while at the same time understanding

micro as embedded time-and-space chains that constitute the macro. Mate-

rial and ideal, moral /emot ional (i.e., "normative") and utilitarian considera-

tions all enter in, each with their own limits, and more importantly, theoreti-

cally specifiable processes and conditions. One could claim, using Alexander's

weapon of analytical distinction between levels of analysis, that conflict

theory should not be reduced to particular questions on the level of empirical

hypotheses, especially polemics regarding change versus stability, or consen-

sus versus non-consensus. Instead, conflict theory deals with all these ele-

ments and specifics, from a higher level of analysis, the conditions under

which particular ones dominate. Conflict theory can even claim to be more

fundamentally multi-dimensional than neo-functionalism, because it is set up to find different elements always in conflict. A thorough conflict theory

would not be subject to the temptations to fall away from multi-dimensional- ity that seem to happen so easily to theories with a less Heraclitean view of

the universe.

I could go on, but it would be off the point. This is about Alexander's book, not mine, and I want to end with the same compliment with which I began,

891

even if I have to say it from my own view-point. I've learned things from this

work, especially about multi-dimensionality, and about analytical strategies,

lessons that 1 think are worthwhile for all of us. And that surely counts as a theoretical advance.

Afterword: On Theoretical Logic

Alexander's Theoretical Logic' in Sociology has inevitably provoked com-

parison to Talcott Parson's Structure of Social Action. Is it merely an

imitation, with Marx substituted for Pareto and Marshall on the economic

side, and Parsons himself added as yet another classic to be integrated? Alexander is obviously a self-conscious inheritor of the Parsonsian legacy.

But his book differs in some basic ways. Parsons's main theme was the

convergence of Durkheim, Weber, and Pareto, essentially on the point that

values underpin the social order. But Alexander explicitly disagrees about

this convergence, and he adds Marx, who does not converge at all. Secondly,

Parsons was pro-positivist, at least programmatically. His avowed aim, he declared, was ultimately to create a Pareto-like system in which all factors,

rational economic action and values alike, would constitute a set of simul-

taneous differential equations. Alexander, by contrast, is a programmatic anti-positivist. Most importantly, Alexander is engaged in a project that

Parsons had no conception of: the development of theory itself. Where

Parsons was a "presentist," pulling out analytical elements from the classics in order to construct a synthetic system, Alexander is concerned (among

other things) about the shape of the historical development of ideas them-

selves. Alexander's search for "theoretical logic" is thus part of his concern for the autonomous tendencies in the movement of ideas per se.

Thus we have the dialectic of Marx and Durkheim's one-sidednesses, the effort at multi-dimensionality in Weber that nevertheless falls apart, and the

same story again (but conceptually more advanced) with Parsons. Alexander argues that there is an inherent strain, so that one-sided positions always

engender a movement toward the missing side. Marx's official materialism thus not only had its voluntarist shadow in his formal writings, but Marx's

followers are seen as filling in the idealism jettisoned by the master. Durk-

heim, interpreted as an idealist, is brought back into balance by the greater

materialism of his followers. Alexander thus seems to posit a long-term movement towards multi-dimensionality. But there is another side, too, as the later, multi-dimensional theorists fall off their balance point and onto

one end of the see-saw. In Volume 3, Alexander speaks explicitly of the strains in Weber away from multi-dimensionality, strains that reappear even within the Parsonian interpretation of Weber (p. 131). And the final sentence

892

of Volume 3 speaks of the failure of both theorists' multi-dimensionality as

testimony "to the obdurate strength of the antinomies of theoretical

thought." (p. 135).

But why should this be so? Surely this is not just intellectual inheritance of

problems, "bad genes" that Alexander elsewhere hopes to eventually purge.

Is the "theoretical logic" of sociology a movement towards ultimate synthe-

sis, or is it, on the contrary, a perpetual tendency to be one-sided, now on one

side, now on the other? One could do a sociology of science interpretation of

this pattern (the latter seeming to be empirically more predominant, by

Alexander's own showing). One could ascribe it to the fundamentally con-

flictual nature of intellectual life. The prominence of one position fills up the

"niches" for eminent careers after a while, forcing ambitious intellectuals to

break away to the opposite side, where the territories are more wide open.

Then they fill up, and the drive for originality produces a shift in the other

way. This is only the crudest sketch, and one could work out a more complex

(and multi-dimensional) model of intellectual communities, out of which

various "theoretical logics" emerge under various conditions. If this were to

be carried out, there would surely be the ultimate serpent in Alexander's

Eden. The autonomy of ideas, the one bastion of idealism that I was willing

to leave safe, would be in danger of social reinterpretation.

Ironically, if this were to happen, Alexander himself would be at least to

some extent a co-conspirator. For despite Alexander's commitment to inde-

terminism, and especially his identification of this with the au tonomy of

ideals factors, one could say that Alexander's "theoretical logic" itself, if

found, would itself constitute a kind of determinism. Even taken on the ideal

level where he wished to locate it, isn't the logic of ideas a kind of predictabili-

ty? That doesn't bother me, because I have already said that the search for

determinism is what our field is all about. For Alexander, it may mean he is

contributing to the advance of science, even against himself.

Theory and Society 14 (1985) 877-892 0304-2421 / 85 / $ 03.30 �9 1985 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.