Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns

Any survey of social theory over the last two decades readily reveals that it remains under the firm control of functionalism. Though there have been significant inroads on the part of, e.g., French structuralism, they were never quite accepted by mainstream sociology. Critical Theory has restricted itself to merely nurturing its tradition, and “genuine” Marxism, which during the protest movements caused some disturbance with its critique of “bourgeois science,” can no longer ignore the crisis it has been caught in for some time. Are all serious attempts at a theory of the social totality bound to the functionalist criterion of “success or failure?”