society if men are to be formed, transformed and equipped, to respond to the demands of their conditions of existence'. ⁷ Therborn's usage of interpellation is, however, a modification of Althusser's concept that comes closer to the traditional structural-functional sociological theory of roles than he admits. Again, Therborn discusses this parallel, but briefly and without much attention to more recent critical accounts of that theory from within sociology.

The general theory of ideology as interpellation, as constituting human subjectivity, therefore has echoes, not only of Althusser, but also of Parsons. It is also vulnerable to the criticism frequently made of both these authors: that their accounts manifest an undesirable functionalism. Parsons, in particular, adopts the strategy of identifying social needs and then explaining the existence of certain social practices by reference to the manner in which they serve those needs.

The same type of functionalist explanation is used to identify class ideologies, which, Therborn contends, have to be derived from a theoretical specification of the necessary requirements of a mode of production: 'it must be theoretically determined which ideologies are feudal, bourgeois, proletarian, petty-bourgeois or whatever; the question is not answerable by historical or sociological induction alone' (pp. 54 -5). Such determination means finding the 'minimum subjection-qualification . . . necessary for a class of human beings to perform their economically defined roles' (p. 55 ). A major problem with Therborn's account of class ideologies is that he does not adequately explain why he chooses certain ideologies as functionally necessary, and his lists of ideological interpellations may not be theoretically or empirically well-grounded. For example, in specifying capitalist class ideologies, he asserts without explanation that bourgeois class egoideologies require 'individual achievement' (p. 57 ), a proposition that is contradicted in at least one advanced capitalist economy, Japan, where a corporate-collectivity orientation among capitalist managers is the typical bourgeois interpellation. Furthermore, Therborn's assertion that working-class ideology involves an orientation to work, to manual labour, including physical prowess, toughness, endurance and dexterity' (p. 59 ) is not appropriate to late capitalism, given changes in the occupational structure which have both created a sizeable non-manual proletariat and brought many women into waged economic roles.

The difficulties raised by this undesirable form of functionalist argument are, of course, similar to those presented by recent (and past) Marxist debates about the role of class struggle. The earlier Althusserian formulations emphasized the way in which the mode of production determined the form of social practices; the mode of production has requirements or conditions of existence which are provided by

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