>>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 03/21/01 04:04PM >>>
I haven't read the above paper & intend to do so later, but could you tell me when you think intentional-functional explanations are useful & when you think they aren't?
It seems to me that intentional-functional explanations aren't useful for explaining the origins & transformations of ruling-class & working-class racisms, for instance. Intentional-functional explanations don't seem useful for explaining imperialism either.
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CB: Oppressing ruling classes are elite minorities and must be more conscious than the classes they oppress to rule them. The consciousness means that many ruling class practices are intentional on the part of at least the ruling class "central committees" . "Functional" has a lot of baggage in social scientific literature, but these intentional practices preserve the ruling class as oppressing ruling class, and preserve the relations of production and private property.
Racism does not spontaneously persist in the U.S. It must be continuously promoted and adapted to new circumstances. The ruling class knows this and they foster and reinvent it.
Tautology is not foreign to fundamental theory.
On teleology, the end or purpose of capitalist society _is_ more and continuing capitalism from the capitalists' point of view. They consciously act toward that end.