SOME COMMENTS ON SMELSER'S SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
Martha E. Gimenez
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado, Boulder
FIRST DRAFT - NOT FOR CITATION WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
Introduction
Given time limitations, I will not examine his work exhaustively.
Instead, I will focus my presentation upon three aspects: his
criticism of Marxist theory, and his theories of social change and
of the family.
Smelser's Critique of Marx
Essentially, Smelser interprets Marx as postulating a direct and
simple relationship between class position, consciousness, and
behavior. He reduces Marxism to economic determinism (a position
easy to prove wrong) and supports his interpretation with selected
quotes from Capital while ignoring Marx's and Engels' important
contributions to the analysis of the complex relationship between
structural change and consciousness. On that basis he claims that
his theory of structural differentiation explains better than Mar-
xist theory working class unrest in England between the late 18th
century and 1840. Working class behavior and ideology cannot be
explained as reactions against capitalist exploitative tactics
such as, for example, wages so low in some sectors of production
that family survival depends upon the employment of everyone, in-
cluding children; intensification of labor, displacement of adult
workers, long hours, injustices to women and children, etc. In-
stead, working class agitation can be better explained by workers'
reaction to problems experienced in their family life. The new
forms of industrial production create structural pressures on the
families of factory workers; they undermine paternal and marital
authority and men's ability to support their families; they dis-
solve the family by lowering wages and using the labor of women
and children while making it harder for adult males to find work,
etc. These and other effects of industrial changes interfere with
the two major functions of the family: pattern maintenance - the
transmission of cultural values through socialization, and tension
management, the management of individual tensions generated by
occupational roles. It is not capitalist exploitation, then, which
mobilizes the workers but their reactions to the impact of indus-
trial structural differentiation upon their family life. I find
his arguments specious and unconvincing because, while documenting
in great detail the processes of capitalist development and the
effects of capitalist exploitation, he rules out the explanatory
relevance of Marxist theory through the use categories of analysis
which make it impossible to take seriously into account the
reality of capitalism as a crucial dimension of the phenomena
being studied.
Smelser's theory of Social Change.
The process of social change is a process of structural and func-
tional differentiation through which ahistorical entities called
societies evolve from an initial state of simplicity and through
successive stages characterized by an ever increasing complexity
or differentiation. All societies, as social systems, must fulfill
four functions: political, economic, integrative, and pattern
maintenance.
This is an abstract theory of change: WHEN ONE SOCIAL ROLE OR
ORGANIZATION BECOMES ARCHAIC UNDER CHANGING HISTORICAL CIRCUMS-
TANCES, IT DIFFERENTIATES BY A DEFINITE AND SPECIFIC SEQUENCE OF
EVENTS INTO TWO OR MORE ROLES OR ORGANIZATIONS WHICH FUNCTION MORE
EFFECTIVELY IN THE NEW HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES.
Now, is it the case that structural and functional differentiation
lead to greater functional effectivity? The proof of the pudding
is in the eating as it is said - so I will apply his theories to
the analysis of the experience of Black Americans in the U.S.
since the 1960's, giving particular attention to the situation of
black female headed families. I shall proceed as he did, filling
the empty theoretical boxes with the help of his conceptual tools,
treating theory as a tool to sort out the "endless facts of his-
tory" into a particular sequence. Needless to say, the boxes will
be hastily filled, with plenty of empty spaces; nevertheless, this
exercise should show, more clearly perhaps than an elaborate theo-
retical exegesis, the shortcomings of the theories in question.
The sequence through which social change proceeds has 7 stages or
empty boxes which I will fill as I present them .
subsystem in question. Blacks during the 1960's showed indeed a
great deal of dissatisfaction with the achievements of the social
system and with the roles it allocated them, placing the vast
majority in precarious economic position and a sizable proportion
in a situation relatively marginal to the system.
2. given those conditions, symptoms of disturbance emerge, in the
form of unjustified negative emotional reactions and unrealistic
aspirations on the part of various elements of the system. These
are manifested in three classic symptoms: anxiety, aggression
(which is unsocialized motivation or relaxation of the most
primitive control over behavior) and phantasy. Those were the days
of the Black Panthers, Black Muslims and Black rebellion
forcefully expressed in riots.
3. next in sequence are " covert handling of those tensions" (the
police, CIA and FBI activities that eventually led to the anihila-
tion of the Black rebellion and the death or imprisonment of its
leaders) and "mobilizing of motivational resources for new
attempts to realize the implications of the existing value system"
or, to quote Smelser again, "responsible agents impose holding o-
perations against the unbridled energy manifested in step 2." This
was accomplished by church and community leaders, the civil rights
movement, the NAACP, and, of course, Martin Luther King.
4. the fourth stage entails encouragement of the resulting proli-
feration of new ideas without imposing specific responsibility for
their implementation or for taking the consequences. There was a
vast production of plans and ideas to solve the problems of Black
Americans and poor people in general.
5. Attempts to specify institutional forms that will end the
dominant dissatisfactions.
6. Responsible implementation of innovations carried out by
persons or collectivities which are either rewarded or punished
depending on their acceptability or reprehensibility in terms of
the existing value system; Civil Rights legislation, busing, head
start, expansion of welfare - the Great Society Programs.
7. if the implementations are favorably received, they are
gradually routinized.
Did the routinization of an expanded welfare system and other
government agencies administering programs for the poor and
minorities lead to greater functional effectivity? As Michael
Harrignton demonstrates in his book THE NEW AMERICAN POVERTY,
the great society programs were more impressive in paper than in
practice and generated a huge bureaucracy. They did have some mo-
dest successes which, in the new war against the poor are ignored
while the situation worsens because of the unprecedented rates of
unemployments the country has experienced and drastic budget cuts
affecting programs such as AFDC, food stamps and other programs
benefiting the poor. A more important dimension of the process of
differentiation through which dissatisfactions emergent in the
system have been handled has been that which gives the State the
role of father. The State replaces the absent father in female
headed families or pushes away the husband in cases where his mea-
ger earnings are below what the family requires for survival or
when unemployment makes him unable to fulfill his
husband/father/breadwinner role.
Smelser's theory makes it possible to construct a plausible
analysis of the processes of functional differentiation through
which the problems created by structural unemployment and the ups
and downs of the business cycle have been contained. This entails
differentiation of the state bureaucracy which takes upon itself
the provision of some of the exchanges with the family which the
private economy is unable to sustain. I should at this point
outline briefly Smelser's theory of the family so my remarks will
be more understandable.
The family is a multifunctional unit which can be analyzed in
terms of four main functions; 1. integrative function - it is a
face to face group; 1. political functions - it allocates
authority among its members; 3. economic functions - it allocates
economic goods among its members; 4. pattern maintenance function
primary function: to transmit cultural values through socializa-
tion (pattern maintenance) and to manage individual tensions
within small face to face groups (tension management). THE
ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF THE FAMILY ARE SUBORDINATED TO THOSE LATENCY
FUNCTIONS. This, Smelser states, is a fundamental proposition. To
analyze the impact of industrial changes upon the family one must
consider the functional exchanges between the two: the family
gives labor in exchange for wages and assets in exchange for goods
and services. A change in industrial structure necessarily means
changes in the family economic functions and leads to the
emergence of dissatisfactions with the organization of the family
economy. Structural changes in the U.S. economy have made it
impossible for a growing proportion of families to engage in such
exchanges and it is at this juncture that differentiation took
place allocating the state the role to provide goods and services
as well as wages to such families. The state assumes thus economic
and parental functions. Theoretically, this should have lead to
greater functional efficiency, as Smelser's theory predicts.
Instead, it has had a disastrous impact upon the nation and upon
the families affected by such structural differentiation
processes. While equilibrium may have been temporarily restored at
the onset of the welfare state and after the turmoil of the
1960's, structural and functional differentiation have led to the
intensification of the problems affecting Black Americans as well
as the poor in general. Change through structural and functional
differentiation does not entail systemic changes; only repairs. It
is a process of quantitative, not qualitative change. The more it
changes, the more the system stays the same.I will not provide
details of the worsening of the situation as I am sure you must be
familiar with them. I will, however, indicate that concern with
the sexual and reproductive patterns that characterize now the
poorest of Black female headed families has lead to the emergence
of a renewed interest in what Moynihan once called the pathology
of the Black Family. A recent documentary by Bill Moyers presents
in detail not only the plight of those families but also the
reactions of four Black leaders. Moyers documentary shows a
community where women stay home waiting for their welfare checks,
having babies at an early age from different fathers, repeating
their mothers and grandmothers experiences. In the streets, men
hang out in corners playing music, rapping about their misery,
showing no signs of the values usually associated with the
protestant ethic, showing no motivation to work and having no
skills that would allow them to work even if they tried, proud of
their sexual prowess, eking out a living from bits of welfare
money collected by their several women and from illegal and
criminal activities. The other side of the concern with teen age
mothers unable to properly socialize their children into the work
ethic while reproducing abundantly the ghetto population is the
presence of a growing number of unemployed and unemployable men
who prey on their own, through sexually exploitative practices and
deviant and criminal behavior. And, there is also the awareness
that such men can also affect the lives of those who live outside
the ghettoes.
It is fascinating to notice that the Black leaders invited to
discuss the documentary, among which was Jesse Jackson, viewed the
problem in Smelserian terms: it was a failure of socialization.
Parents were not teaching their children religious, social and
moral values. The welfare system was singled out as the villain
although it was acknowledged that it should not be scraped but
reformed. None of them gave primacy in their analysis of the
problem to the structural unemployment that characterizes the
capitalist economy and qualitative changes in the demand for
labor. Unemployment was mentioned in passing and a law professor
from American University said that it would be hard to expect
youngsters to develop certain values if they had no prospect of
employment. But her point, although received with approving
murmurs, was not taken up and the discussion continued about the
need to strengthen the value system. The Moynihan report was
mentioned with some approval and so it went. Columnist Ellen
Goodman, writing about that program, referred to the Moynihan
report as a report whose time has come and commended Black leaders
for their courage to look at the problems of the Black family in
the face instead of avoiding them as it happened 20 yrs ago when
the report was rejected and harshly criticized If one were to
focus purely upon what is empirically observable and obvious, it
would seem that Smelser's theory of the family which gives primacy
to its tension management and pattern maintenance functions is
appropriate to explain the plight of these families. Once these
functions fail, the family is unable to fulfill its economic
functions. These functions, which entail the " generation of
motivation to assume occupational roles and acquire earning
capacity, ability to assume an occupational role, a valuation of
industry and a balance of skills, levels of competence and
motivation" are subordinate to the ability of the family to
socialize its members properly and where tension management is
handled correctly, not through the presence of occasional lovers
or errant husbands and the support of an extended family network,
but through the presence of a male able to hold a steady job and
provide a good example to his children.
Looking at this situation from the standpoint of Marxist theory, I
would argue that it shows very clearly, just as the working class
upheavals in England showed, that the economy and the family do
not simply engage in exchanges but that the economy has power
over the family: it can make it or break it and this can be
understood only if the problem is conceptualized in Marxist terms.
The class that control the means of production controls also the
conditions for the physical and social reproduction of the labor
force - the class that owns nothing but its labor power. To the
extent that, given the state of the class struggle and the complex
interplay of national and international economic conditions, the
capitalist class makes decisions that lead to the exclusion of a
growing number of people from the occupational structure - this is
tantamount to denying them the conditions for their own physical
and social reproduction. Consequently, families are unable to
fulfill all their economic and their latency functions. Economic
functions are not subordinated to latency functions as Smelser's
fundamental proposition states, but all of them are subordinated
to the family's access to the material conditions necessary for
its physical and social reproduction. And, in fact, this is what
Smelser's research actually shows once it is separated from its
functionalist shell.
I will now end my remarks with some additional comments about
Smelser's theory of social change. For Smelser, the role of the
value system in the process of change is important because it
serves as a source of criteria for perceiving, evaluating and
controlling the achievements of the social system; it specifies
the conditions under which members of the system should express
dissatisfactions and prepare to undertake change. But, as Marx and
Engels pointed out, the dominant ideas are the ideas of the ruling
classes. As long as social theory operates within the boundaries
set by the dominant ideology it will continue to produce
misleading research findings, partially accurate renderings of
social reality incapable of being the basis for sound policy
making.
Smelser's social system is a world in which economy and family,
floating in the void like heavenly bodies, freely engage in
functional exchanges. This is a world where social classes and
class struggles do not exist; in fact neither social classes nor
power are listed in the index of concepts in the book. He uses the
notion of social class descriptively, not theoretically. Members
of the working classes are people who occupy the role of workers
in some enterprise and they do not confront capitalists but
persons occupying the roles of entrepreneurs, factory owners and
so forth. The momentous historical process whereby pre-capitalist
relations of production change into capitalist relations of
production is thus reduced to processes of structural and
functional differentiation in the family and in industries,
changes in the division of labor and emergence of new roles and
statuses. His theories are, therefore, adequate for describing the
behavior of individuals and organizations at the level of market
and social relations but they rule out the analysis of the
historically specific structures, processes and contradictions
which operate outside the consciousness of individuals and which
not only generate the disturbances and dissatisfactions but also
perpetuate them as a cyclically recurrent phenomena. Smelser's
theory of social change, in other words, captures the ebb and flow
of "conflict resolution" under capitalist conditions. The theory
is, nevertheless interesting, because it identifies the ways in
which, in the absence of organized political activity based on a
thorough analysis of the economic system, individuals become
ideologically conscious of those contradictions and attempt to
overcome them. Smelser takes the ideological forms in which
workers experience their exploitation and uses them to deny
explanatory value to the transformations of the mode of production
and the class struggles that trigger those concerns. Far from
postulating an economic determinist standpoint, Marx stated that,
when examining the process of economic change, "...a distinction
should be made between the material transformation of the economic
conditions of production... and the legal, political, religious,
aesthetic, philosophic, in short, ideological forms in which men
become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." Had Smelser
known Marx's methodological guideline and taken it seriously, his
empirical research, which I found most impressive and significant
as a contribution to working class history, would not have been
tied to an apologetic and relatively useless taxonomy of functions
but would had been rooted in the economic and political processes
that led to the consolidation of capitalism. As it is, his
research accomplishes something that Smelser never intended; it
does not support the functional reading of history but illuminates
the complex interplay between structure and ideology and between
the mode of production and the mode of physical and social
reproduction through which the propertyless classes reproduce
themselves.