The Impossibility of Society

Abstract

claim that legitimation is a fundamental mode in which the coherence of class-dominated societies is secured as of these other theories of consensual ideology . It is particularly important to be cautious about the thesis that crises of legitimation are the main sources of tension which threaten the stability of Western capitalist societies . Such a view presumes-in company with Parsons and Althusser-that social order rests upon normative consensus-that normative consensus, mixed with a little police power and coercion, is the main mechanism whereby sectional interests are held together in a class society . But there is good reason to question just such a presumption .

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