The Parsonian Approach to Economics1

I t is somewhat embarrassing to review a work by a distinguished author whose system of thought makes no appeal whatsoever to the reviewer. The senior author of the work under review is an eminent Harvard sociologist who is pre-eminently a Man with a System. The system is an elaborate taxonomy of social phenomena according to a fourfold pattern. It is developed in great detail in Parsons’ earlier works-a summary only is provided in the present volume. The system has an elaborate terminology of its own, a terminology devised so that practically no word in it shall enjoy its common meaning in the English language. It is consequently difficult for the reader to follow: learning Parsons is almost like learning a new language. The theory is internally coherent, and it is unquestionably one way of organising thought about social phenomena. The question is whether it is a useful way, and especially whether it is useful enough to warrant the considerable expenditure of time and energy which is required to master it. The present volume is important because it promises to be in a sense a test case of the Parsonian system. The economic system is clearly a sub-system of a larger social system, of which the Parsonian theory purports to give an account. The test, therefore, is whether the Parsonian system can be applied to the sphere of economics in such a way as to yield insights into the operation of the economic system which economics by itself cannot provide. This is the task of the present volume. I t is a congenial one to the authors : Parsons himself was originally trained in economics, and his associate, Smelser, is a sociologist who has also received training in economics with the deliberate end of applying the Parsonian system to economic problems. I t is unfortunately impossible in a brief-or even in an extended review-to give any adequate summary of the Parsonian system itself. We can only say here that it analyses social life into four parts or aspects, named by the four letters A (for Adaptive), G (for Goal-Gratification), I (for Integration) and L (for LatentPattern Maintenance and Tension Management). In so far as one can identify these systems with parts of the social universe, the A-system is best represented by the economic system, the G-system by the political system (or, as Parsons calls it, the Polity) ; the I-system and the L-system are less easy to identify, but may be roughly equated with Religion (sport, morale, ethics, etc.) and with the Household or the Social Individual as a “boundary maintaining” system. We must beware, however, of identifying the Parsonian dramatispersonae with anything that looks like flesh and blood; they are aspects of all organizations, or all concrete realities, and no concrete reality can be identified with any one of them. Social action, in the Parsonian system, is conceived as something which happens at the boundaries of these systems, each of which feed outputs of some sort into the others and receive inputs from them. In and around these systems Parsons has developed an elaborate