Chapter1: Introduction: Sociological Theory

Ralf Dahrendorf's Dialectical Theory

For the first halt-of the twentieth century, the conflict ideas contained in the German masters had not been explicitly incorporated into the mainstream of sociological theory, especially in America. Marxist scholarship was particularly recessive, being repressed in America by the anti-communism of the Cold Warera. The reinvigoration of conflict theory was couched as a critique of the excesses of functionalism, which was often accused of being a conservative and supportive ideology of the status quo.

In the late 1950s, Rail Dahrendorf persistently argued that the Parsonian scheme, and functionalism in general, presented an overly consensual, integrated, and static vision of society--in his words a "utopia."13 In Dahrendorf's view, society has two faces-one of consensus, the other of conflict. It was time, Dahrendorf asserted, to begin analysis of society's ugly face and abandon the utopian image created by functionalism.

The model that emerged from this theoretical calling is a dialectical conflict perspective, which still represents one of the best efforts to incorporate the insights of Marx~ and (to a lesser extent)Weber and Simmel into a coherent set of theoretical propositions. Dahrendorf believed that the process of institutionalization involves the creation of imperatively coordinated associations (here-after referred to as ICAs) that, in criteria not specified, represent a distinguishable organization of roles. This organization is characterized by power relationships, with some clusters of roles having power to extract conformity from others. Dahrendorf was somewhat vague on tiffs point, but it appears that any social unit--from a small group or formal organization to a community or an entire society--could be considered an ICA for analytical purposes if an organization of roles displaying power differentials exists. Furthermore, although power denotes the coercion of some by others, these power relations in ICAs tend to become legitimated and can therefore be viewed as authority relations in which some positions have the "accepted" or "normative right" to dominate others. Dahrendorf thus conceived of the social order as maintained by processes creating authority relations in the various types of ICAs existing throughout all layers of social systems.

At the same time, however, power and authority are the scarce resources over which subgroups within a designated ICA compete and fight. They are thus the major sources of conflict and change in these institutionalized patterns. Tiffs conflict is ultimately a reflection of where clusters of roles in an ICA stand in relation to authority, because the "objective interests" inherent ha any role are a direct function of whether that role possesses authority and power over other roles. However, even though roles in ICAs possess varying degrees of authority, any particular ICA can be typified as just two basic types of roles, ruling and ruled. The ruling cluster of roles has an interest in preserving the status quo, and the ruled cluster has an interest in redistributing power, or authority. Those who are ruled constitute only a quasi group because they are not fully aware of their interests to challenge the system of authority, nor are they organized to pursue conflict with those in authority.

Under certain specified conditions, however, awareness of these contradictory interests increases, with the result that ICAs polarize into two conflict groups, each now aware of its objective interests, which then engage in a contest for authority. The resolution of this contest or conflict involves the redistribution of authority in the ICA, thus making conflict the source of change in social systems. In turn, the redistribution of authority represents the institutionalization of a new cluster of ruling and ruled roles that, under certain conditions, polarize into two interest groups that initiate another contest for authority. Social reality is thus typified by this unending cycle of conflict over authority within the various types of ICAs that constitute the social world.

In Dahrendorf's theoretical scheme, the key variables are (1) the degree of conflict-group formation, (2) the degree of intensity of the conflict, (3) the degree of violence of the conflict, (4) the degree of change of social structure, and (5) the rate of such change. As is evident in Table 8.5, Dahrendorf's propositions appear to he an elaboration of those developed by Marx, but with some important qualifications. Like Marx, Dahrendorf saw conflict as related to subordinates' growing awareness of their interests and formation into conflict groups (Proposition I). Such awareness and group formation are a positive function of the degree to which (a) the technical conditions (leadership and unifying ideology), (b) the political conditions (capacity to organize), and (c) the social conditions (ability to communicate) are met. These ideas clearly come from Marx's discussion. However, as shown in Proposition Ⅱ, Dahrendorf borrows from Simmel and contradicts Marx, emphasizing that if groups are not well organized--that is, if the technical, political, and social conditions are not met--then conflict is likely to he emotionally involving. Then Dahrendorf borrow from Weber (Proposition Ⅲ) by stressing that the superimposition of rewards--that is, the degree of correlation among those who enjoy privilege (power, wealth, and prestige) also increases the emotional involvement of subordinates who pursue conflict. Proposition Ⅳ shows that Dahrendorf also takes as much from Weber as from Marx. Dahrendoff heheved that the lack of mobility into positions of authority escalates the emotional involvement of subordinates. Proposition V is clearly from Simmel and contradicts Marx, in that the violence of conflict is related to the lack of organization and clear articulation of interests. But in Proposition VI, Dahrendorf returns to Marx's emphasis that sudden escalation in people's perception of deprivation--that is, relative deprivation--increases the likelihood of violent conflict. In Proposition VII, however, Dahrendorf returns to Simmel and argues that violence is very much related to the capacity of a system to develop regulatory procedures for dealing with grievances and releasing tension. And in PropositionsⅧ and Ⅸ, Dahrendoff moves again to Marx's emphasis on how conflict produces varying rates and degrees of structural change in a social system.

Dahrendorf was not the first conflict theorist of the midcentury, but he soon became the most influential. Primarily because of his attack on Parsodian functionalism, he gained wide notoriety and, hence, a receptive audience for his reanalysis of Marx, which incorporated important qualifications from Simmel and Weber. Orthodox Marxists were very critical of Dahrendrf's abstract and analytical approach because in their view Dahrendoff had taken much of the substance out of Marx's analysis. Dahrendoff had stripped Marx, in their view, of the very concepts that made Marx's approach so important--concepts like proletariat, bourgeoisie, capitalism, exploitation, value theory of labor, and the like. Still, Dahrendorf did liberate conflict theory from Marxian parochialism, making it appealing to a wider sociological audience. At the same time that Marxists were criticizing Dahrendofli, another conflict theorist--Lewis Coser--with more sympathy for functional sociology was proposing a less extreme alternative to dialectical approaches. Drawing more from SimmeI than Marx, Coser proposed a functional theory of conflict.