In many quarters and with rising insistence, it has been charged
that, whatever the intellectual worth of functional analysis, it is inevitably
committed to a "conservative" (even a "reactionary") perspective (1968,
p. 91).
Thus say these critics, functional theory is merely the orientation
of the conservative social scientist who would defend the present order
of things, just as it is, and who would attack the advisability of change,
however moderate (1968, p. 91).