Like Talcott Parson, I know he's making an important point, it's just that hacking through the mental undergrowth to get at it is difficult.  

About John Bates Clarke.  

I'm studying political science, there's this tacit, but very real competition going on right now about the extent rational choice paradigms have been allowed to choke out all other theory in the American sub-field.  

I worked as a research assistant for the principal instigator on the rational choice side.  

I find the intolerance which proponents of rational choice (utility maxmizing) paradigms show towards explanations that do not suppose utility maximization and individualist ontology to be behind political phenomena to be ironic given their presentation that they are the defenders of liberty and academic freedom.  

I think that unless we recognize that reduction of human life to the narrow construct of utility maximization was responsible for most of the horrors of the 20th century we are damned to repeat it.  And that is far more than an academic concern.


And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg