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✍ Scribed by Jon Elster

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 559 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0304-2421
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00173625

✦ Synopsis

It is both gratifying and somewhat confusing to be the object of comments as acute and diverse as those made in the July issue of Theory and Society on my "Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory." To some extent the discussants demolish each other's objections. Thus Roemer and (more ambiguously) Van Parijs support my view of functional explanation against Cohen, while Giddens defends it against Berger and Offe. Yet this does not relieve me of the task of replying more directly to the critics. Rather than deal with the comments one by one, I shall organize my reply under five general headings: methodological individualism, functionalism, structuralism, game theory, and Marxism.