ABSTRACT
In the beginning, Parsons had planned a single chapter dealing with “the impact of economic and political interests with special reference to stratification” (Parsons 1973c). A draft of a large section of the chapter along these lines was written in the second half of 1973 or in early 1974 (Parsons 1973-1974). When Parsons took the text in hand again in 1975, he decided to revise the whole table of contents, introducing a different chapter for the dimension of kinship and style of life, thus dividing the original content in two separate chapters (Parsons 1975b). The work did not, however, proceed until early 1978, when Parsons started writing an “entirely new chapter which will deal with the relations between the integrative system and the economy” (Parsons 1978e). The chapter was meant to explore Parsons’s new idea of defining the core of the economy in terms of a set of markets (Parsons 1978j). Critically, it was meant to show how both Marxists and “economic approach” theorists were wrong in their generalization of economic theory as a total theory of the modern social system (Parsons 1978f, 1978j). The chapter was finished in mid-August 1978 (Parsons 1978d) and only slightly revised in the subsequent months, with the addition of a few inserts.
