These facts have important implications for social theory.
In the first place, if there is no such thing as a perfect social system,
we should stop spinning theories which postulate their existence and direct
our energies toward the building of theories which explicitly assume that
all human organizations are imperfect systems. Second, social theorists
(and researchers too) should stop trying to find social utility in all
the varied behavior patterns of men; they should recognize that many established
patterns of actions re thoroughly antisocial and contribute nothing to
the general good. Third, we should expect to find both cooperation
and conflict as continuous and normal features of human life and should
stop viewing conflict as a pathological or abnormal condition, as is often
done in contemporary functionalist theory. Fourth, we should devote
more attention to the causes and consequences of variations in the degree
of group integration. Finally, we must learn to think of distributive
systems as reflecting simultaneously system needs and unit needs, with
each often subverting the other (1966, p.34).